Geologic Mapping of Av-10 Oppia Quadrangle of Asteroid 4 Vesta

Abstract

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at the main belt asteroid 4 Vesta on July 16, 2011. Dawn is collecting a variety imaging, spectral, and elemental abundance data during its one year in orbit to charac-terize the geology, geochemistry, shape and internal structure of Vesta. The Dawn Science Team has begun geologic mapping of Vesta’s surface at the global [1,2] and of 15 quadrangles at the regional scale. This ab-stract reports results from the mapping of quadrangle Av-10, named Oppia (Fig. 1). Research supported by NASA Dawn at Vesta Participating Scientist Program. Data: The base image for mapping quadrangle Av-10 is a monochrome (clear filter) Framing Camera (FC) mosaic using images from the High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO) (70 m/pixel) (Fig. 2a). Vari-ations in surface composition are informed by Visible and Infra-Red (VIR) hyperspectral images from Survey (700 m/pixel) and HAMO (200 m/pixel) orbits and FC color ratio images (250 m/pixel) from Survey orbit. Topography of Av-10, shown in the colorized Digital Terrain Model (DTM) (Fig. 2b), is derived from Sur-vey orbit FC data [3-5]. Slope and contour maps de-rived from the DTM are used to characterize geologic features and the extent of geologic units.