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Vesta’s Deep Grooves Could Be “Stretch Marks” From Impact

Friday, September 28, 2012 10:22

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(Before It's News)

Dawn image of Vesta showing its nearly circumferential equatorial grooves (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Even though NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has departed Vesta the trove of data it’s gathered about this fascinating little world continues to fuel new discoveries. Most recently, some researchers are suggesting that Vesta’s curious grooves — long, deep troughs that wrap around its equator, noticed immediately after Dawn came within close proximity — are actually features called graben, the results of surface expansion along fault lines.

In Vesta’s case, the faults likely may have come from whatever major collision created the enormous central peak that rises almost three times the height of Mt. Everest from its south pole… and the expansion could be the result of differentiation of its interior — a separation of core, mantle and crust that’s much more planet-like than anything asteroidish.

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Read the rest of Vesta’s Deep Grooves Could Be “Stretch Marks” From Impact (431 words)

© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: asteroid, dawn, differential, dwarf planet, graben, NASA, Solar System, vesta