Dawn spacecraft prepares to leave Vesta for Ceres
After spending a year examining asteroid Vesta, Dawn NASA‘s spacecraft is preparing to leave and head to the largest asteroid – dwarf planet Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015. This image shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA Scroll down for video
Vesta’s Technicolor surface (video)
This animation of asteroid Vesta is made from images taken with Dawn’s framing camera. Many of the images were taken at different viewing angles to provide stereo for use in determining the topography.
Mosaic Image of Vesta
This mosaic of Vesta one of the largest asteroids, with a mean diameter of about 530 kilometres (330 mi), shows the location of the data acquired by VIR (visible and infrared spectrometer) during the HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the Dawn mission.
Asteroids sizes
This composite image shows the comparative sizes of nine asteroids. Up until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta dwarfs all other small bodies in this image.
