NASA’s not landing on the moon – it’s not even firing off Space Shuttles any more – but it IS taking a long, close look at one of the biggest asteroids out there:
“We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system,” the mission’s principal investigator, Christopher Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the statement.
NASA said that after the orbital capture, Dawn sent an initial close-up image taken for navigation purposes. Before the Dawn mission, images of Vesta were obtained by ground- and space-based telescopes but did not show much surface detail.
Vesta, 330 miles in diameter, is the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt and is believed to be the source of many meteorites that fall to Earth.
Dawn will continue to approach Vesta over the next three weeks, search for possible moons and make more navigation images. It begins gathering science data in August. Vesta’s gravitational pull on Dawn will be measured to more accurately determine the asteroid’s mass.
The spacecraft will eventually get as close as 110 miles from the surface.