NASA Dawn Spacecraft Beams Back New Images Of Vesta Asteroid

LOS ANGELES -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been a fervent photographer, snapping more than 10,000 pictures of the asteroid Vesta since it slipped into orbit around the giant space rock last summer.

The views were taken from a distance away – until now. On Wednesday, the space agency released new images of the hummocky surface as Dawn circled from an average altitude of 130 miles above the surface – the closest it'll get.

From this low orbit, scientists can count numerous small impact craters and see textured grooves and outcrops in sharp detail.

"We're totally thrilled with the data we're getting. It seems to get better," said mission deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $466 million mission.

By inching this close to Vesta, Dawn will use other instruments to measure the gravity field and determine its chemical makeup to better understand its origins.

Dawn will spend the next 2 1/2 months at the current altitude before moving higher to take another round of pictures. By that time, the sun will hit Vesta at a different angle and illuminate sections of the northern hemisphere that had been shrouded earlier.

About the length of Arizona with a huge crater at its south pole, Vesta is the second largest body residing in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids are leftovers from the solar system's birth some 4.5 billion years ago and studying these bodies could offer clues about how rocky planets like Earth formed.

Previous spacecraft have visited smaller asteroids before, but this is the first trip to Vesta.

Powered by ion propulsion, Dawn began orbiting Vesta in July after a 1.7 billion-mile cruise. It will depart Vesta next summer and will fly to an even bigger asteroid, Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

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Online:

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Check out the Dawn spacecraft's near-surface images of Vesta Asteroid.:

Comments

[bird121451]

08:01 AM on 12/24/2011

it funny that when nasa faces cuts in funding that they start discovering all sorts of things but can not track a rouge satalite oh well do what you have to do to keep certain pockets lined with cash

[beyondme]

08:00 AM on 12/24/2011

$466 million dollars to let big boys play with big toys! I still don't get what this is going to accomplish, and why the U.S spends so much on a program that has no goal. Science and technology are better places to deposit this cash flow the goverment seems to direct into orbit. Why can we afford? to send a satelite 1.7 billion miles from earth to look at a rock, and we can't feed people a mile away? maybe I have my priorities confused. JS

[BeeTap22]

09:09 AM on 12/24/2011

It beats putting more money in our war chest to continue our primitive behavior. I mean we can take more than half of the monies out of our war chest to take care of our people and still have more than enough to fuel political fires to blow up.
Space is our future. Maybe by going there we can leave our stupidity behind and in time remember that Earth was once a sand box for children to play war. Its time for mankind to grow up and climb out of the trees. Maybe we can find a true nature of God out there instead of our "gods" fighting each other and commanding death and destruction like a bunch of primitive monkeys spraying and defecating on the branches for those inane "gods" (our misguided belief systems).

[thedesertpig]

03:31 AM on 12/24/2011

they say these Asteroids are leftovers from the solar system's birth ... maybe they are the remains of a planet that once orbited the sun as we and the other planets do now ...

[bluto1mil]

02:32 AM on 12/24/2011

wow

[hackitoff]

01:34 AM on 12/24/2011

Nice pictures but does it make any difference since the world is supposed to come to an end in 2012 per the Mayan calendar. If correct, nobody will be around in 2015.

[hackitoff]

01:32 AM on 12/24/2011

All I want to know is if it's going to land in Washington D. C. before the elections. That's the 2012 elections.

[fhmjam]

12:35 AM on 12/24/2011

Good place to ship Chevy Volts.......

[Peter Vida]

12:40 AM on 12/24/2011

What do you have against the Chevy Volt?

[fhmjam]

12:55 AM on 12/24/2011

Maybe the question should be: what do I have against the astroid Vestra (to want to ship the overpriced, ecological disastorous batteries have to be disposed of, government subsidized powered by electricity made from coal burning power plants boondogle). Nothing much against the car, really.

[cre8iveman]

11:39 PM on 12/23/2011

I see the knuckle-draggers are out in force again. Imagine, if all you cave dwellers can, that the universe actually extends beyond your immediate neighborhood and the distance from your front door to the local strip club.

[sydney251]

11:29 PM on 12/23/2011

Hmmmm, I'm really surprised not to see a Walmart, a McDonalds Drive Thru, and a Walgreens on every corner?

[Cary D]

01:20 AM on 12/24/2011

It's Vesta, not Afghanistan. LOL

[foonpub]

11:22 PM on 12/23/2011

Here's a thought! Shouldn''t the human race work on a way to divert these off path asteroids b4 one makes a b-line for Earth! Makes a lot more sense than oouing and ahhhing at just pictures! After all, you know what they say about being prepared?--Shannon

[Alan626]

03:29 AM on 12/24/2011

Some might think part of being prepared would be to study your target before you just start willy-nilly trying to move a rock the size of Arizona around like an ashtray on a coffe table.
Of course, those would be people who actually know what the consequences might be of just skipping the reconnaissance and doing it on your schedule instead.
And we're already working on it. We have been for years. Futzing around with one of these things while it's hurtling through space at speeds that can reach upwards of 100,000 mph isn't as easy as you think.

[bigbobh]

10:33 PM on 12/23/2011

Did you see the Golden Arches? They been there done that.

[Srta TacoMal]

10:11 PM on 12/23/2011

Very cool :) I just wish these space missions weren't so pricey :( Outer Space might not be my area of interest, but I'd like to know as much as possible about what's going on outside of this planet.

[cosmicdart]

10:34 PM on 12/23/2011

Columbus' three wooden ships were pricey too in reference to the Spanish economy. It took him years of arguing to get the money for them. Perhaps they should have used this money to feed starving children. When the British Empire was on the rise there was much poverty in England. Sometimes it's necessary to prime the wealth pump with money that could have fed starving English children cuz what happens after that's all gone? Life is a gamble!

[sigmetsue]

09:23 PM on 12/27/2011

Well, Ferdinand and Isabella waited until AFTER they were through with an expensive war before they gave Columbus a go ahead. As I recall, Granada was defeated and the Christian reconquest of Spain was completed in January of 1492. Columbus set sail that summer.

[rattpoison55]

10:09 PM on 12/23/2011

Did the Gamilons send Vesta to smash into Earth? If so, the Argo (Space Battleship Yamato) needs to launch and destroy it with the wave motion gun.

[buminthesun421]

10:22 PM on 12/23/2011

I've never heard anyone give a "Starblazers" reference... I love it...

[dede4007]

09:49 PM on 12/23/2011

With our country in dire need of money, why are we spending millions and billions on extended space exploration. It doesn't make sense right now. We need the money here, until our country can stabilize. It seems like a waste, and the government can never seem to justify it.

[cosmicdart]

10:14 PM on 12/23/2011

What we're in dire need of are enough human and natural resources with which back a stable currency. We have unfortunately created more money than our National resources can support. Most of the wealth in our Solar System is outside of Earth's orbit. Our space program is all about acquiring new human and natural resources with which to back our currency. If we owe 13 trillion, and then we find 1000 trillion in natural resources elsewhere in our solar system then that 13 trillion becomes insignificant. Spain sent three wooden ships to the Americas which resulted in thousands on tons of gold, silver, and commodities coming back. For a while Spain was the wealthiest nation in Europe. If we are to grow, we must expand our civilization beyond Earth's orbit.

[realwoman8]

10:17 PM on 12/23/2011

We can't wait until everything is perfect here before we forge ahead with scientific exploration. There will always be some crisis here on Earth, but we need to keep moving forward and advancing our knowledge if we're to have any hope for the future.

[black2deep]

10:47 PM on 12/23/2011

There is never going to be a perfect time, a perfect society, nor a time when people are not starving or warring against each other. As our resources here on earth are depleted, war and starvation are not going to get better but worse. The longer we stay on this rock the worse it is going to get. The longer we take to start mining and utilizing the resources in space the shorter the time we have as far as survival goes here on earth. The longer we take to establish livable habitats in space and other planets, the less time humanity has to survive here on earth. That is not fiction, but facts. We have too many people, tool little resources, and very little time. In 2000 we were 5 billion, in 2010 we were seven billion. Scientist and environmentalist say that the earth can no longer support the earth when it hits 11 billion. At that point we will be consuming more than what the earth can produce.

[Effren Hernandez]

02:49 PM on 12/27/2011

Scientists and environmentalists have known that the USDA pays growers not to grow. Pays producers not to produce. With all the pseudo scientist and preudo-environmentalists we have, if they knew what they are doing, we would have enough to learn, teach and actually produce something...Where do we get this ballony about consuming our resources when there is pleanty of arable land in in the continental US, South America and Africa. Give those scientists and environmentalists a hoe and lets put them to work to stop hunger.

[JohnHopwood2]

09:48 PM on 12/23/2011

Great pix! NASA rocks!

[chapduck]

01:03 AM on 12/24/2011

No, those are space rocks!