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Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies

Video of Asteroid Vesta!

24 Jun 2011

Dawn, one of NASA’s Discovery class missions, is steadily closing in on its first intended target, the asteroid Vesta.  Dawn will enter orbit around Vesta in July and will spend one year in orbit there thoroughly studying the asteroid’s geology, chemistry and more. Insights gained there will help build the link between Vesta and the howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) class of meteorites.  After its year at Vesta, Dawn will depart and head to a rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, in 2015.  This week, NASA released video of Vesta, taken by the approaching Dawn spacecraft.  Click here for the latest Vesta images and Dawn mission updates.