Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Virtual Flight Over Asteroid Vesta

NASA ^ | May 14, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta? Animators from the German Aerospace Center recently took actual images and height data from NASA's Dawn mission currently visiting Vesta to generate such a virtual movie. The above video begins with a sequence above Divalia Fossa, an unusual pair of troughs running parallel over heavily cratered terrain. Next, the virtual spaceship explores Vesta's 60-km Marcia Crater, showing numerous vivid details. Last, Dawn images were digitally recast with exaggerated height to better reveal Vesta's 5-km high mountain Aricia Tholus. Currently, Dawn is rising away from Vesta after being close enough to obtain the most detailed surface images and gravity measurements of the Solar System's second largest asteroid. In August, Dawn is scheduled to blast away from Vesta and head toward Ceres, the Solar System's largest asteroid.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA; Animation: German Aerospace Center (DRL)]

[SunkenCiv]

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[cripplecreek]

Scientists now see Vesta as a layered, planetary building block with an iron core – the only one known to survive the earliest days of the solar system. The asteroid's geologic complexity can be attributed to a process that separated the asteroid into a crust, mantle and iron core with a radius of approximately 68 miles (110 kilometers) about 4.56 billion years ago. The terrestrial planets and Earth's moon formed in a similar way.

NASA Dawn Mission Reveals Secrets of Large Asteroid

[GeronL]

bump

[bmwcyle]

WOW!

[the invisib1e hand]

Princess Vespa

[Autonomous User]

I bet she gives great helmet.

[martin_fierro]

You can noodle around with Vesta and much of the rest of the Cosmos with Celestia (free!)

[TheOldLady]

It’s going to take until August before the Dawn Mission blasts away from Vesta? Are they Ceres?

[mikrofon]

Vestal Virtualin’

[SunkenCiv]

:’D