Surface Characteristics of the Dwarf Planet Ceres

When Dawn—the only spacecraft to ever visit the dwarf planet Ceres—mapped out the celestial body a decade ago, many bright, white spots were noted on the surface. On further inspection, these bright spots were revealed to be salt deposits. More interestingly, these particular salt deposits can only be formed in the presence of water, indicating a subsurface ocean on the dwarf planet. This discovery leads to an important question: Could life have existed on Ceres in the past? Is there life present on the surface now? While NASA does plan for a Ceres sample-return mission, there are still many logistics that need to be dealt with prior to the launch of a spacecraft back to the asteroid belt. In the meantime, we can investigate potential landing spots on Ceres’ surface close to the scattered salt deposits. Unfortunately, many artifacts are present in the data collected from Dawn, making corrections a necessity. Using the Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS) and Python, we can apply artifact minimization to the recorded data, so an algorithm can correctly assess prime targets for spacecraft landing. The corrections made thus far have been successful, and the hope is that when the Ceres sample-return mission finishes, the salt-deposit samples we will have collected contain evidence of life on Ceres and, by extension, outside Earth.