The Odyssey crater ejecta may reflect the strength of the rock impacted on, and the crater does bisect some sort of boundary. See this item in the "Geomophology of Cape York" thread...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=177528
[I, er, have an excusably good impression of that other statement...]

One thing evident from the pictures of Cape York is a zone of "reduced topography" inside of, but concentric to, its boundary. One can speculate that this represents a "zone of alteration" of the original rim deposits after burial by the sulfate sediments.
The Odyssey crater is centered on the inner boundary of this zone, and indeed the northeast half of the rim debris is made up of larger (stronger) rocks, while the southeast half has almost no large rocks, presumably because the zone-of-alteration made debris from that side more friable.
It is also possible that this zone represents an ancient soil layer in the rim deposits, and that role, rather than alteration by the subsequent Meridiani sulfates, made them more friable.
The presence of obvious intrusive veins in the rocks currently under Oppy is another constraint on understanding things. Do the big rocks on the other side of Odyssey contain such veins?
The remainder of Oppy's scientific functionality will be well-challenged to answer these questions. But we are indeed positioned to ask them.

I'm wondering if the circumferential "zones" around CY are more chemical in nature... See post in "Geomorphology of Cap York" thread...

It seems that Endeavor was created before most (if not all) of the Meridiani sediments were emplaced. The sections of exposed rim of Endeavor are essentially ejecta from the Endeavor impact. After that impact, the Meridiani sediments were laid down, perhaps with rounds of erosion in between. Did the raised rim sections get buried/eroded? Cape York sure looks like a piece of the rim that was long ago buried, and now is being exhumed. Other higher parts of the rim may or may not have been buried. Were these "islands" eroded by wind? water? ice? brine slime?
Note the Endeavor central plateau, with hundreds of meters of sediment, worn away most just inside the rim. It is amazing what can happen slowly if you've got a couple billion years...
I've noticed that the sediment layering partially follows the slope -- not sure without better analysis. It is possible that the circumferential "zones" around Cape York may be more chemical in nature than structural. I.e, just different strength and chemistry of the matrix just due to original ionic groundwater diffusion from the older rim ejecta. We will soon see.
I'm having great fun thinking about it all.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the sediment layers are tilted (or not!) as we approach the edge of Cape York. So far, I've seen nothing remarkable, although we have been gradually descending through layers.
What is worth noting is the skyline of the raised tableland within Endeavor Crater. It represents the current erosional state of the deposited fill within the crater. This is a reminder of the profound ancient-ness of this crater and the Martian surface. There may have been multiple rounds of crater filling (at least partial) and erosional excavation in the history of this crater, much like the rest of Mars.

Ring decay seems unlikely to explain most of the grooves, since many of them (especially the far-northern big ones) are not "great circles" and thus curve along the surface, and could not have underlain a ring system, even if the rotation axis had shifted. Better mapping of the Vesta surface and the gravity figure as the mission progresses will shed light on this. If the gravity field is "weird" enough, it would discourage ring formation.
When I look at the distribution of crater ejecta back onto a rapidly-rotating Vesta from the south pole impact (who did that simulation?), plus massive seismic forcing, and then extension cracking with debris collapse, I see a possible explanation. But extension cracking is a bit dirty, and doesn't usually result in such straight lines. So I am not satisfied yet with this picture.

What can make a series of long, straight grooves along the equator of an isolated self-gravitating body?
Debris collapse into extension cracks is one possibility. But what would cause straight cracks at the thickest part of the body?
In the South Pole impact, as the debris was blasting away, the center of mass of Vesta became shifted towards its North Pole, and the area around the crater rim became very high ground. The result static force on the equatorial region would have been compressive.
However, the dynamic situation would have been different. In solids, compression waves travel faster than shear waves, and the bulk (2/3) of the momentum transfer (apart from vaporization heating) from the impact would be transferred by the shear waves, especially an angular momentum change.
With Vesta getting its bell rung so hard, the equator could have been the mega null/shear zone between torsional resonance modes. With debris falling on/in/around the cracks and partially filling them, we could end up with the current distribution.
With limited information coming from Dawn, they'll just have to put up with theories from the bleachers (cheap seats for the Brits).

Anyone know where/when the recording of the press conference will be available?

Note that the "grain" of the cracks in the sediment now trend parallel to the rim of the crater. The boundaries of the covered-versus-uncovered areas also shows this trend. More extension perpendicular to the rim? Influence of buried topography? We are probably descending thought sediment layers too. The ground slope here is only 1-2 degrees. So far.

The orange area is around the sub-solar point, so I think it just represents daytime heating. Over time, a strong lead or lag behind nearby features with different times-of-day (Vesta Sols!) would be very interesting.

Replies...
My understanding is that the North pole of Vesta will just begin to be illuminated at the end of the Vesta mission, so there will be eventual global photo coverage by Dawn.
Also, mass wasting from the crater sides does not seem to explain the 5-km-ish spaced parallel ridges on the crater floor. I'm wondering if they are ridges of olivine....

There is a big difference between Miranda and Vesta, however. The difference is the presence of ice and tidal forces on Miranda, both largely absent on Vesta.
Ice is quite ductile, and small gravity can cause it to flow, but plain rock, like on Vesta, don't flow unless it is pretty much hot enough to melt, and the interior pressures in Vesta, with it's light gravity, are not going to contribute that strongly.
One of the big questions is how warm was the interior of Vesta at impact? We already know (pretty much) that Vesta got hot enough early to differentiate its core/mantle/crust, and then we can ask how much of this heat was left at impact. Since the planet as a whole did not re-spherize itself, it must have been largely cooled to a solid at impact time. Perhaps some of the core was still liquid -- radioactive decay might have kept it going a while.
On the other hand, Quite some time might have passed since the planetary system formed and cleared out the nebula and most debris before the impact. We know that a significant amount of asteroidal objects are dynamically related to Vesta and are shards of the great impact. The surface of Vesta also does not appear to be crater-saturated. (With further imaging, crater counts should be able to give a rough age estimate -- looking forward to that.)
So it seems (arms waving wildly) that the energy for reshaping parts of Vesta had to be delivered by the energy of impact. How much shock melting could accomplish is unclear, and a better answer is in the hands of the planetary modelers and the mega-computers.
An interesting idea is the possibility that accumulated surface volatiles were stirred up by the impact and ablated by solar and impact heating, and Vesta was a giant comet for a while...
Well, I think I've embarrassed myself enough for now. Its a free country, gotta love it.

Boys and girls, it's "Rampant Speculation Time...."
The patterns on the South Pole crater floor do resemble both Miranda, and Earthly sea-floor spreading. Perhaps a shock-melted mantle zone convected for a while, rafting surface debris and local volcanics into linear rows from spreading crack centers. Fun to speculate.
Vesta had it's "bell rung" pretty good with the impact, maybe there was a surface wave interference pattern that distributed things in the pattern seen.
Relaxation after impact, with the core wanting to re-center, and perhaps migration of the rotation axis, could cause some of the features we see. Also the floor striations could be caused by compressional wrinkling from this relaxation, plus landslides and collapse blocks from the crater rim.
Is the central mountain a volcano, an intrusive diapir, an infall debris pile, a garden-variety crater central mound, or a combination?
Stay tuned!

Dawn will be captured for me birthday. Cool!
And remember, Dawn was NOT captured by Mars, it was a hyperbolic trajectory/deflection.

I made up a little tune a while back called "Cresting the Rise", and I thought this might be a good thing to share with the UMSF Rover fans...
Something to listen to while we wait...

...A few of us do not have binocular fusion, and thus the glasses are no help...
(cross-eye pics don't work either)
...but don't stop posting....

Has anyone heard anything science-specific about Ruiz Garcia? What the heck is it?
?New form of well-cemented deep local sediment dug up by impact?
?Impact-welded local sediment?
?Part of the impactor? (Primary or secondary?)
?Something else?

At its current distance from Dawn, Vesta is only maybe about 3 pixels wide in the framing cameras, not much fun yet. At some point, there will be navigational benefit from the cameras, but I'm unsure when that starts.

It is indeed encouraging to see that the cameras are operational again after all this time in the cold irradiated vacuum of space. Congrats to the Dawn teams!

I like the Irish music in the background of some of the on-line presentations. Nice!

Being part of this exploration history never gets old...

Actually, Messenger is catching up with Mercury, with higher ellipticity in its current (not for long!) orbit, Messenger's speed at perihelion is greater than Mercury's.

At the present time (this Sunday Evening), Mercury would appear from Messenger to be about the same size as the Moon from Earth, with the Sun looming 3 times that diameter.
I think Messenger must halve its current distance to Mercury to enter the Hill Sphere... Soon!

At Messenger's current distance from Mercury, a sharp-eyed human observer would be able to make out the tiny crescent shape. It won't be long now. Will any navigation images be released, I wonder?

The "shore-like" features around Cape York are most likely the result of a combination of evaporite deposit-cementation and ice erosion. [IMHO].
It seems likely to me that any Martian body of water would be ice-covered nearly all the time, so any "shoreline" erosion features would be dominated by this layer of ice. Indeed, glacial patterns may dominate. Probably some sort of snow/brine freeze-thaw/dust cycle.
Terrestrial analogs?

Messenger is at its last Aphelion before capture into Mercury orbit. Cool (well, as cool as it will ever again get, unless it goes into Mercury's shadow....)

Looks like the RAT is in action (or at least its brush), from the Forward Hazcam images...

In reference to my earlier post about Santa Maria maybe being an impact in a rubble pile -- as better images came in, the horizontal layers below the old surface showed through the rubble, so it is NOT a crater in a rubble pile. There does seem to be something "funny" about the south/east side, though. And I like the dark friable debris dribbling out of cracks on the S/SE wall...