DAWN GRAND: Smoothed Hydrogen Map of Asteroid Ceres

NASA's Dawn mission GRaND instrument measured thermal and epithermal neutrons from a low altitude orbit to create a smoothed global map of hydrogen concentration in Ceres's regolith. The map provides concentrations representative of the bulk regolith up to a few decimeters deep with a spatial resolution of about 600-km full-width-at-half-maximum. The methods are described by PRETTYMANETAL2017.

Use Cases

• Modeling regolith composition on Ceres based on hydrogen concentration data
• Analyzing spatial distribution of volatiles on asteroids based on neutron counting data
• Correlating hydrogen concentrations with other geological features of Ceres mentioned in the description

Strengths

• Data originates from NASA's Dawn mission GRaND instrument, a primary scientific source
• The map has a defined spatial resolution of about 600-km full-width-at-half-maximum
• Hydrogen concentrations are representative of regolith depths up to a few decimeters

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• The dataset's last update date is 2026-03-13; freshness should be verified

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data acquired by the NASA Dawn mission's Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND) in low altitude mapping orbit.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 11:05:21.073919

Geography

Asteroid 1 Ceres