Approaching Giant Asteroid Vesta, First Images

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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid Vesta, which will help fine-tune navigation during its approach. Dawn expects to achieve orbit around Vesta on July 16, when the asteroid is about 117 million miles from Earth.

The image from Dawn’s framing cameras was taken on May 3 when the spacecraft began its approach and was approximately 752,000 miles (1.21 million km) from Vesta. The asteroid appears as a small, bright pearl against a background of stars. Vesta also is known as a protoplanet, because it is a large body that almost formed into a planet.

This image shows the first, unprocessed image obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of the giant asteroid Vesta in front of a background of stars. It was obtained by Dawn’s framing camera on May 3, 2011, from a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles). Vesta is inside the white glow at the center of the image. The giant asteroid reflects so much sunlight that its size is dramatically exaggerated at this exposure.

Vesta is 330 miles (530 kilometers) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. But, in Dawn’s early approach images, Vesta only appears approximately five pixels across in size.

This and other images help Dawn fine tune navigation during its approach to Vesta, with arrival expected on July 16, 2011.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. It is a project of the Discovery Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. UCLA, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.

The framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA.

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

“After plying the seas of space for more than a billion miles, the Dawn team finally spotted its target,” said Carol Raymond, Dawn’s deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “This first image hints of detailed portraits to come from Dawn’s upcoming visit.”

Vesta is 330 miles (530 km) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes obtained images of the bright orb for about two centuries, but with little surface detail.

This image, processed to show the true size of the giant asteroid Vesta, shows Vesta in front of a spectacular background of stars. It was obtained by the framing camera aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on May 3, 2011, from a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles). Since Vesta is so bright that it outshines its starry background, Dawn team members commanded a long exposure time to make the stars visible. They corrected the resulting exaggerated size of Vesta by superimposing a short exposure image of the target asteroid, showing its true size. Vesta is the small, bright pearl in the middle of the image.