Like a Hollywood starlet constantly retouching her makeup, the giant asteroid Vesta is constantly stirring its outermost layer to present a young face. Data from NASA's Dawn mission show that a form of weathering that occurs on the moon and other airless bodies we've visited in the inner solar system does not alter Vesta's outermost layer in the same way.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed the giant asteroid Vesta has its own version of ring around the collar. Two new papers, based on observations from the low-altitude mapping orbit of the Dawn mission, show volatile, or easily evaporated, materials have colored Vesta's surface in a broad swath around its equator.
NASA's Dawn mission is releasing two parting views of the giant asteroid Vesta, using images that were among the last taken by the spacecraft as it departed its companion for the last year.
Activities for new Expedition 31 crewmembers, Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin include a pre-launch fit check in a Soyuz capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the raising of flags outside the Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters and launch to the orbiting laboratory to meet up with NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency.
NASA Dawn mission researchers undertaking the first global analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta have looked back at the history of our solar system and found evidence of surprisingly recent collisions that left large impact basins.
Findings from NASA's Dawn spacecraft reveal new details about the giant asteroid Vesta, including its varied surface composition, sharp temperature changes and clues to its internal structure. The findings were presented today at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria, and will help scientists better understand the early solar system and processes that dominated its formation.
NASA's Dawn mission has received official confirmation that 40 extra days have been added to its exploration of the giant asteroid Vesta, the second most massive object in the main asteroid belt. The mission extension allows Dawn to continue its scientific observations at Vesta until Aug. 26, while still arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres at the same originally scheduled target date in February 2015.
Vesta is spending the 205th anniversary of its discovery by treating Dawn to more spectacular vistas When Heinrich Wilhelm Matthaeus Olbers first spotted Vesta, he could hardly have imagined that the power of the noble human spirit for adventure and the insatiable hunger for knowledge would propel a ship from Earth to that mysterious point of light among the stars. And yet today our spacecraft is conducting a detailed and richly rewarding exploration of the world that Olbers found.
This Dawn FC (framing camera) image shows numerous linear chains and clusters of small craters. These chains and clusters of craters were created by material that was ejected during the formation of a larger crater, which is located far outside of this image.
This 3-D image, called an anaglyph, shows the topography of Vesta's eastern hemisphere. To create this anaglyph, two differently colored images are superimposed with an offset to create depth. When viewed through red-blue glasses this anaglyph shows a 3-D view of Vesta's surface.
This Dawn FC (framing camera) image shows Caparronia crater, after which Caparronia quadrangle is named. Caparronia crater has an unusually shaped, irregular rim that is sharp and fresh in some areas and more rounded and degraded in others.
This Dawn image shows heavily cratered terrain in Vesta's equatorial region. The craters have a wide range of sizes and have many different forms, which include fresh, degraded and some that are barely visible because they are so degraded.