- A spacecraft visited the second largest asteroid in the Solar System on July 17, 2011. The “Dawn” spacecraft orbited the asteroid, “Vesta” for over a year.
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- Vesta is 360 miles in diameter. Dawn left Vesta on September 5, 2012 on its way to the largest asteroid, “Ceres” that is 590 miles in diameter.
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- Vesta is the brightest of the asteroids and can be see on occasion with the naked eye having a Magnitude of + 5.4. Binoculars work as well. The asteroid was first discovered in 1807.
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- Vesta takes 3.63 years to orbit the Sun at a distance that varies from 2.57 o 2.15 astronomical units, traveling at 43,264 miles per hour. Vesta rotates on its axis every 5.34 hours. Its surface temperature varies from -10 F to - 150 F.
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- As Dawn orbited the asteroid it measured the gravity force and mapped the gravitational variations as it rotated. Modeling these variations have concluded that Vesta has an iron core, a mantle, and a crust much like the planets. The iron core is 136 miles in diameter.
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- Dawn took 4,700 pictures and 9,000,000 infrared spectra. Vesta’s surface contains a whole range of minerals , iron being the most prominent.
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- Vesta has experienced some major collisions with other asteroids. There is a crater at its south pole that is 310 miles diameter and 12 miles deep. This is overlapping another crater that is 250 miles diameter and 7 miles deep. the craters were dated to be 1 billion and 2 billion years old. These massive impacts have erases all other catering on the south pole.
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- Dawn spacecraft is due to arrive at Ceres on February, 2015. Ceres is such a large asteroid it is classified as a “ dwarf planet”. This should be an interesting visit. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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