The article says, "Researchers behind the new work wanted to tackle the mystery using a common tool in planetary science, crater counting. The technique is based on the fact that because crater impacts occur randomly, older surfaces have been hit more often than younger ones and therefore display more scars. While crater-counting doesn't allow precise dating of surfaces, it can sometimes determine whether one site is older than another. In addition, places where impact features overlap show scientists that the feature on top formed more recently than the one below it."
My observation. Crater counting is an interesting dating method. Does Vesta show evidence of a young surface age using crater counting method? 4 Vesta orbits the Sun in ~ 3.69 years. 4 Vesta could complete more than 271 million revolutions around the Sun in one billion year time span. Has the asteroid completed this number or more since its origin? That is difficult to show. Was the crater formation rate assumed on 4 Vesta more than 4 billion years ago, a higher rate of impacts than 4 Vesta present orbit experiences? Does the crater rate match up with the number of revolutions 4 Vesta has completed around the Sun since its origin? Assumptions are made here in the dating methodology. It is important to identify all assumptions used in dating methods in science.
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