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You’re Beautiful, Vesta

By Guest PostMay 11, 2012Scienceancient roman goddess, beauty, berlin, building blocks, ceres, christopher t russell, crater on vesta, dawn mission, dlr institute, dwarf planet, earth, freie universitaet, gamma ray, Germany, gravitational field, gravity, hearth, ion propulsion, iron, iron core, jet propulsion laboratory, jpl, jupiter, katlenburg, los angeles, mars, max planck institute, monterey, moon, mount everest, NASA, neutron spectrometer, orbit, planetary, protoplanet vesta, radiation, regolith, san francisco, Science, solar nebula, solar system, solar system models, solar system research, south polar region, ucla, vesta, vestoids, wavelengths

NASA’s UCLA-led Dawn mission shows protoplanet’s surprising surface

When UCLA’s Christopher T. Russell looks at the images of the protoplanet Vesta produced by NASA’s Dawn mission, he talks about beauty as much as he talks about science.

“Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected,” said Russell, a professor in UCLA’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission’s principal investigator. “We knew Vesta’s surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. We didn’t find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine.”

Dawn has been orbiting Vesta and collecting data on the protoplanet’s surface since July 2011. Vesta, which is in the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is currently some 321 million miles from Earth. (more…)

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta

By Guest PostJuly 17, 2011Scienceasteroid, asteroid vesta, ceres, charles bolden, dawn, dawn spacecraft, dwarf planet, german aerospace center, gravitational pull, gravity, italian space agency, jet propulsion laboratory, los angeles, main asteroid belt between mars and jupiter, marshall space flight center in huntsville, max planck institute for solar system research, NASA, President Obama, spacecraft, university of california, vesta

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions. (more…)

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You’re Beautiful, Vesta

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta