AN ANALYSIS OF POSSIBLE LANDING SITES ON CERES

Thus far, nearly all of the information known about Ceres has been gathered by the Dawn mission. While Dawn revealed much about the dwarf planet, future orbiter and lander missions will be required to further address the origins and history of Ceres. Presently, the surface physical and chemical properties are known only on the order of tens of meters. A more precise survey is necessary to continue investigating its geology. There are several geologically interesting areas that should be analyzed as potential landing sites for a future mission. These include, but are not limited to, Occator crater (contains the bright faculae and dark materials), Ahuna Mons (candidate for potential cryovolcanism), Oxo and Juling craters (water ice detected), Haulani crater (material diversity), Ernutet crater (organics detected), and Kerwan crater (possible evidence of early viscous relaxation). The Dawn orbiter provided many data sets about Ceres' surface that can be used to narrow down a landing site from these different areas. For example, visible and color-enhanced images display terrain variations and elevation, and image cubes from Dawn’s visible and infrared (VIR) spectrometer show the concentrations of various minerals.

Here we use the program ArcGIS to create maps of each parameter required or desired for a landing site. These maps are then overlain in the program to highlight the overlapping regions. Areas that comply with all engineering constraints can then be paired with maps of geologically interesting areas. The overlapping regions between the engineering and geologic requirements can determine specific landing sites for any future Ceres landers. The engineering constraints that must be taken into account include: slopes less than 15 degrees (approaching the maximum safe slope for a lander), smooth terrain on the scale of the lander, and regions that receive sufficient sunlight for a lander’s solar panels. For areas with evidence suggestive of recent cryo-activity, planetary protection procedures must also be considered.

Acknowledgements: This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract to NASA. Support from JPL’s education office.