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Dawn Arrives at Vesta
It has been a long, 1.7 billion-mile journey into the asteroid belt for NASA's Dawn spacecraft, launched on September 27, 2007. The spacecraft finally arrived at its first stop at asteroid Vesta on July 16, 2011.
Dawn entered orbit around Vesta and wasted no time getting its bearings by taking the most detailed photographs of the asteroid yet seen, including an image of its dark side.
Additionally, Dawn is paying a visit to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The spacecraft will orbit around Vesta for a year before proceeding on to arrive at Ceres in February of 2015.
Dawn's travels through the asteroid belt are all in hopes of finding out more about the early universe.
Vesta is the brightest member of the asteroid belt as seen from Earth, allowing it to be discovered in 1807. It was the fourth asteroid ever to be found. With an average diameter of 330 miles, Vesta is also the second most massive asteroid in the asteroid belt after Ceres, discovered in 1801.
Ceres only recently became designated as a dwarf planet after the International Astronomical Union changed its definitions of planets in 2006. Consequently, the Dawn spacecraft will become the first to visit a dwarf planet, just a few months before New Horizons arrives at Pluto.
Because Dawn will capture such unprecedented images of the two largest members of the asteroid belt, the goal is to learn more about the origins of our solar system.
Vesta is a dry, rocky body and has created some of Earth's meteoritic activity. In fact, Vesta is one of the only bodies in our solar system of which we have acquired a physical sample--the others being the moon and Mars. In contrast, Ceres may contain large amounts of water ice and even a thin atmosphere.
Despite their different properties, both Vesta and Ceres can indicate what planet formation was like early in the creation of the solar system.
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