NASA's Dawn spacecraft is about to get up, close, and personal with Ceres, a dwarf planet that's been lurking in the asteroid belt. As it approaches, Dawn has been snapping some amazing images of the rock, and it just took some of its highest-resolution photographs yet.
NASA's Dawn mission has beamed back the best-ever view of a 'planet' between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft is just 147,000 miles and a few months shy of reaching Ceres, the largest unexplored rock between the Sun and Pluto. (Though the 590-mile-wide rock is officially classified as both a dwarf planet and the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, Dawn's operators consider it a real planet.)
The asteroid Vesta was first discovered two centuries ago, but until NASA's Dawn spacecraft arrived there earlier this year and began beaming back images and data, Vesta was seen as just another blurry, rocky satellite out there orbiting in the asteroid belt. Now, with Dawn's instruments giving researchers their first really good look at Vesta's composition and surface features, some astronomers are wondering if perhaps they haven't discovered a small terrestrial planet rather than an asteroid.
Today in pretty space pics: the asteroid Vesta, captured in all its multicoloured glory by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The colours, of course, aren't true. Rather, they've been assigned by scientists to show different mineral and rock types as data streaming back from Dawn is informing the analysis of this unique asteroid.
