[meteorite-list] NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-293  

NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
September 16, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. - A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a
flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

The data obtained by Dawn's framing camera, used to produce the
visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that formed
Vesta's striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all over
the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most
massive object in the main asteroid belt.

The video, which shows Vesta as seen from Dawn's perspective, can be
viewed at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1020.

You'll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is
no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has
seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern
polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta's rotation
from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of
Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night .

Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular
structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager
to see this area close-up, since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope first
detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is several
hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide, with cliffs that are also
several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the
depression rises approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the base of
this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known
bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system.

The collection of images, obtained when Dawn was about 1,700 miles
(2,700 kilometers) above Vesta's surface, was used to determine its
rotational axis and a system of latitude and longitude coordinates. One
of the first tasks tackled by the Dawn science team was to determine the
precise orientation of Vesta's rotation axis relative to the celestial
sphere.

The zero-longitude, or prime meridian, of Vesta was defined by the
science team using a tiny crater about 1,640 feet (500 meters) in
diameter, which they named "Claudia," after a Roman woman during the
second century B.C. Dawn's craters will be named after the vestal
virgins-the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, and famous Roman women,
while other features will be named for festivals and towns of that era.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a
project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for
overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners include
Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for
Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for
Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany; Italian National Institute for
Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. Orbital Sciences
Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

You can also follow the mission on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .

Priscilla Vega 818-354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
priscilla.r.vega at jpl.nasa.gov

2011-293