Presenting Vesta the Asteroid

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around asteroid Vesta on July 16, 2011.

Interesting facts:

1) Photo is taken from the spacecraft Dawn 9,900 miles (16,000km) away.

2) We’re uncertain of Vesta’s mass so we played it safe and took a high orbit.

3) Over the next 3 weeks we’ll lower the orbit and get a much more accurate calculation of her mass and even higher resolution images.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA