Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Geologic Mapping of Ceres Special Issue of Icarus, which contains papers that include geological maps of the surface of dwarf planet Ceres derived from NASA's Dawn mission data. These maps were made to support analyses conducted by the Dawn Science Team during the Ceres Nominal Mission (March 2015–June 2016). In this paper we review knowledge of Ceres gained through the Dawn mission, discuss the goals, data, and methods used in our geologic mapping campaign, including the mapping approach using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. We also review the global geologic context of Ceres, and summarize the mapping results described in more detail in the papers in this Special Issue. We conclude this paper with a review of the applied lessons learned from the Vesta mapping campaign. In addition, we discuss new lessons learned from Ceres mapping, which leads to new recommendations for conducting mapping campaigns as part of planetary spacecraft nominal missions.
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