Explanation:
What does the surface of asteroid
Vesta look like?
The brightest asteroid in the
Solar System
and the object which takes up about 10 percent of the entire mass of the
main asteroid belt
had never been seen up close before.
Over the past few weeks, however, the robotic Dawn spacecraft became the first
spacecraft ever to
approach Vesta.
A few days ago, just after attaining orbit, Dawn took the
above image.
Early images show Vesta to be an old and battered world, covered with craters, bulges, grooves, and
cliffs.
Studying
Vesta may give clues to the
formative years of our early Solar System, as the unusual world may be one of the largest remaining
protoplanets.
After a year of
studying Vesta, Dawn is scheduled to leave orbit and, in 2015, approach the only
asteroid-belt object that is larger:
Ceres.
Poll:
Which of these recently submitted images would make good future APODs?
