asteroid Vesta tagged posts

The troughs on Vesta have long been a topic of scientific speculation. The asteroid Vesta is the second largest asteroid in our solar system. With a diameter of about 330 miles, it orbits the sun between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

Asteroids have long played a part in building popular fascination with space. “Marooned off Vesta” was the first story published by American writer Isaac Asimov, the third story he wrote, appearing in the March 1939 issue of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

“When we think of asteroid belts, we probably picture Han Solo maneuvering the millennium falcon through a dense set of irregularly shaped gray rocks in space,” Christian Klimczak, associate...

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter preserves the processes of planetary formation, frozen in time. Vesta, the second largest asteroid in this belt, provides an outstanding opportunity for scientists to investigate the origin and formation of planets. In particular, Vesta has kept its crust, mantle and metallic core, much like Earth. Careful mapping of Vesta by NASA’s Dawn mission showed that the crust at the south pole of Vesta is unusually thick.

In a paper just published in Nature Geoscience, Dr. Yi-Jen Lai of the Macquarie University Planetary Research Centre and Macquarie GeoAnalytical and her colleagues propose a new evolutionary history of Vesta involving a giant impact...

Occator Crater (57 miles, 92 kilometers) on Ceres, home of the brightest spots on the dwarf planet, in a simulated view using Dawn images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The movie shows Ceres in enhanced color, which helps to highlight subtle differences in the appearance of surface materials. Scientists believe areas with shades of blue contain younger, fresher material, including flows, pits and cracks.

The animated flight over Ceres emphasizes the most prominent craters, such as Occator, and the tall, conical mountain Ahuna Mons. Features on Ceres are named for earthly agricultural spirits, deities and festivals.
The movie was produced by members of Dawn’s framing camera team at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, using images from Dawn’s high-altitude mapping orbit...