Right now NASA ’s Dawn spacecraft is 114 million miles from Earth , revolve thousands of miles above the open of the giant asteroid Vesta . And Dawn ’s been taking photo .
depict here is the first full human body paradigm tear by Dawn ’s onboard frame up tv camera . The photo reveal a exercise set of three craters on Vesta ’s northern cerebral hemisphere that has been conversationally nicknamed “ Snowman ” by the camera ’s squad member ( you could see the three Crater on the unexpended side of the image up top ) .
Vesta is the brightest asteroid of all the rocky main - belt body , and the second biggest , evaluate an average of 330 miles in diameter . Vesta is so large that the 2006 draft marriage proposal by the International Astronomical Union on the definition of a major planet actually listed Vesta as a campaigner .
“ We have been calling Vesta the small terrestrial planet , ” said Chris Russell , Dawn ’s principal tec at UCLA . “ The late imaging provides much justification for our expectation . They show that a multifariousness of processes were once at work on the surface of Vesta and provide extensive evidence for Vesta ’s planetary aspirations . ”
Dawn will proceed to orbit Vesta for a year before setting course for Ceres , the largest of the main belt asteroids .
ViaNASA
Top Image via NASA / JPL - Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Space
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