Dawn Journey Above Vesta Asteroid 2011 NASA JPL 2min 720HD

• Report rights infringement
• published: 04 Oct 2011
• views: 999

video for embedding at http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/asteroid_news.html JPL story: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-293 PASADENA, Calif. - A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. The data obtained by Dawn's framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that formed Vesta's striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all over the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most massive object in the main asteroid belt... You'll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta's rotation from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night . Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager to see this area close-up, since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope first detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is several hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide, with cliffs that are also several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the depression rises approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the base of this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system. The collection of images, obtained when Dawn was about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) above Vesta's surface, was used to determine its rotational axis and a system of latitude and longitude coordinates. One of the first tasks tackled by the Dawn science team was to determine the precise orientation of Vesta's rotation axis relative to the celestial sphere. The zero-longitude, or prime meridian, of Vesta was defined by the science team using a tiny crater about 1,640 feet (500 meters) in diameter, which they named "Claudia," after a Roman woman during the second century B.C. Dawn's craters will be named after the vestal virgins-the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, and famous Roman women, while other features will be named for festivals and towns of that era. The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners include Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft. For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov . You can also follow the mission on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn from: "Dawn Project Transition to Mission Operations" http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/41045/1/08-2759.pdf "Dawn launched on 27 September 2007 on a mission to orbit main belt asteroids (4) Vesta in 2011 - 2012 and (1) Ceres in 2015. The operations team conducted an extensive set of assessments of the engineering subsystems and science instruments during the first 80 days of the mission. A major objective of this period was to thrust for one week with the ion propulsion system to verify flight and ground systems readiness for typical interplanetary operations. Upon successful conclusion of the checkout phase, the interplanetary cruise phase began, most of which will be devoted to thrusting.... The Dawn project is designed to investigate the geophysical properties of the two most massive residents of the main asteroid belt, (4) Vesta and (1) Ceres. With mean radii of 265 km and 476 km respectively, these bodies have survived relatively intact from the solar system's epoch of planet formation, yet they have remarkably different characteristics. Detailed comparative studies are expected to yield insight into the conditions and processes of that epoch, at the dawn of the solar system..." Dawn, Vesta, Ceres, asteroid, probe, spacecraft, ion propulsion, ion thruster, ion engine, NASA, JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech,

Dawn Journey Above Vesta Asteroid 2011 NASA JPL 2min 720HD

• Report rights infringement
• published: 04 Oct 2011
• views: 999

video for embedding at http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/asteroid_news.html JPL story: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-293 PASADENA, Calif. - A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. The data obtained by Dawn's framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that formed Vesta's striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all over the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most massive object in the main asteroid belt... You'll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta's rotation from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night . Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager to see this area close-up, since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope first detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is several hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide, with cliffs that are also several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the depression rises approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the base of this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system. The collection of images, obtained when Dawn was about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) above Vesta's surface, was used to determine its rotational axis and a system of latitude and longitude coordinates. One of the first tasks tackled by the Dawn science team was to determine the precise orientation of Vesta's rotation axis relative to the celestial sphere. The zero-longitude, or prime meridian, of Vesta was defined by the science team using a tiny crater about 1,640 feet (500 meters) in diameter, which they named "Claudia," after a Roman woman during the second century B.C. Dawn's craters will be named after the vestal virgins-the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, and famous Roman women, while other features will be named for festivals and towns of that era. The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners include Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft. For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov . You can also follow the mission on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn from: "Dawn Project Transition to Mission Operations" http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/41045/1/08-2759.pdf "Dawn launched on 27 September 2007 on a mission to orbit main belt asteroids (4) Vesta in 2011 - 2012 and (1) Ceres in 2015. The operations team conducted an extensive set of assessments of the engineering subsystems and science instruments during the first 80 days of the mission. A major objective of this period was to thrust for one week with the ion propulsion system to verify flight and ground systems readiness for typical interplanetary operations. Upon successful conclusion of the checkout phase, the interplanetary cruise phase began, most of which will be devoted to thrusting.... The Dawn project is designed to investigate the geophysical properties of the two most massive residents of the main asteroid belt, (4) Vesta and (1) Ceres. With mean radii of 265 km and 476 km respectively, these bodies have survived relatively intact from the solar system's epoch of planet formation, yet they have remarkably different characteristics. Detailed comparative studies are expected to yield insight into the conditions and processes of that epoch, at the dawn of the solar system..." Dawn, Vesta, Ceres, asteroid, probe, spacecraft, ion propulsion, ion thruster, ion engine, NASA, JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech,