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Asteroid Ceres is a former ocean world that slowly formed into a giant, murky icy orb
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Researchers at Purdue University and the NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) now believe Ceres is a very icy object that possibly was once a muddy ocean world.
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“Our interpretation of all this is that Ceres used to be an ‘ocean world’ like Europa (one of Jupiter's moons), but with a dirty, muddy ocean,’” Sori said. “As that muddy ocean froze over time, it created an icy crust with a little bit of rocky material trapped in it.”
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“To me the exciting part of all this, if we're right, is that we have a frozen ocean world pretty close to Earth. Ceres may be a valuable point of comparison for the ocean-hosting icy moons of the outer solar system, like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus,” Sori said. “Ceres, we think, is therefore the most accessible icy world in the universe. That makes it a great target for future spacecraft missions. Some of the bright features we see at Ceres' surface are the remnants of Ceres' muddy ocean, now mostly or entirely frozen, erupted onto the surface. So we have a place to collect samples from the ocean of an ancient ocean world that is not too difficult to send a spacecraft to.”
Asteroid Ceres is a former ocean world that slowly formed into a giant, murky icy orb - Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences - Purdue University
A crater-rich dwarf planet named Ceres located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was long thought to be a celestial being composed of a materials mixture not dominated by water ice. Researchers at Purdue University used data from NASA’s Dawn mission to show that...
www.eaps.purdue.edu
An ancient and impure frozen ocean on Ceres implied by its ice-rich crust - Nature Astronomy
An ice-rich crust with increasing silicate content with depth is consistent with Ceres’ crater morphology, lack of crater relaxation and gravity inversions. This structure has a higher ice content than previously expected and could form from a relic ocean.
www.nature.com