Sunday, March 2, 2014

The Asteroid Vesta


This is a charming news clip describing NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid Vesta. Dawn is said to have remained in orbit around Vesta for a period of a year. 

Vesta has an enormous crater-basin at its south pole named Rhea Silvia. The crater overlays another enormous crater-basin from a previous impact (though smaller).  This article from space.com contains a video which says that instead of being random conglomerate of floating rock, Vesta has a planet-like layered interior, a "differentiated core". The article also contains an introduction to Vesta's features and a short history about its discovery. 

The image is apparently from JPL and not copyrighted. If it is copyrighted, I will immediately remove it. 

No comments:

Post a Comment