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Title: NASA's Dawn probe set to orbit Asteroid Vesta
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14160135
Published: Jul 15, 2011
Author: Jonathan Amos
Post Date: 2011-07-15 05:03:19 by Tatarewicz
Keywords: None
Views: 26

The US space agency says its Dawn probe should go into orbit around the Asteroid Vesta early on Saturday (GMT).

The robotic satellite will be spending a year at the 530km-wide body before moving on to the "dwarf planet" Ceres.

New pictures on Dawn's approach to Vesta show the giant rock in unprecedented detail.

The asteroid looks like a punctured football, the result of a colossal collision sometime in its past that knocked off its south polar region.

Dawn's encounter is occurring about 188 million km (117 million miles) from Earth. Engineers have put the spacecraft on a course to be captured in the gravitational field of Vesta.

They expect to hear confirmation from the satellite on Saturday that it is safely circling the rock.

Initially, Dawn will be about 16,000km (9,900 miles) from the asteroid, but this distance will be reduced over time.

"It has taken nearly four years to get to this point," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Our latest tests and check-outs show that Dawn is right on target and performing normally."

Scientists believe asteroids can help them understand more about the earliest days of the Solar System. These wandering rocks are often described as the rubble that was left over after the planets proper had formed.

Vesta and Ceres should make for interesting subjects. They are both evolved bodies - objects that have heated up and started to separate into distinct layers.

In the case of Vesta this probably means it has an iron core.

Ceres, which, at 950km in diameter, is by far the largest and most massive body in the asteroid belt, may not have got that far.

Scientists think it probably retains a lot of water, perhaps in a band of ice deep below the surface.

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