Small fresh impact craters on asteroid 4 Vesta: A compositional and geological fingerprint

Abstract

AbstractSmall morphologically fresh impact craters (<10 km in diameter) on Vesta's surface with a photometrically distinct ejecta blanket are expected to represent fresh surface material and thus provide the opportunity to study the composition of the unweathered surface. Dawn‐Framing Camera and Visual and Infrared Spectrometer (VIR) data reveal impact craters with bright, dark, and mixed, i.e., partly bright and dark, ejecta existing on Vesta's surface, which not only differ in the visible albedo from their surroundings but also in their composition. Differences in the composition are related to the visible albedo and/or the geographic location of the impact craters. Bright ejecta, only seen in the southern Vestan hemisphere, are dominated by howardite/eucrite‐like material as expected for Vesta's upper crust. Dark ejecta associated with dark impact craters are dominated by a strongly absorbing, spectrally neutral compound, supporting an origin from carbon‐rich impactors. Few impact craters of intermediate albedo in Vesta's southern hemisphere contain material resembling diogenites, which are expected to exist in the deeper parts of Vesta's interior. The geological settings suggest that the diogenite‐like material represents a part of a layer of diogenitic material surrounding the Rheasilvia basin or local concentrations of diogenitic material as part of the ejecta excavated during the latter stage of the Rheasilvia impact event. The spectral differences between eucrite‐ and diogenite‐dominated materials also could be verified due to spin‐forbidden absorptions in the visible spectral range, which are known from laboratory spectra of pyroxenes, but, which have been identified in the VIR spectra of Vesta for the first time.