Scientists study first close-ups of giant asteroid

SCIENTISTS are busy poring over images of the massive asteroid Vesta, the first time it has been photographed up close.

The Dawn spacecraft last month slipped into orbit around the 530km-wide rocky body with little fanfare and began beaming back incredible details of the pockmarked surface that resembles Earth’s moon.

Since entering orbit, Dawn has taken more than 500 images, while refining its path and inching ever closer to the surface to get a better view. The probe will officially start collecting science data next week once it is positioned 2,740km from the surface.

Dawn so far has imaged the entire sunlit side of Vesta. Last week, it passed over a part of the surface hidden in the shadows and saw distinct grooves.

Analysing the surface “enables us to determine what has happened to Vesta over the eons,” said the mission’s chief scientist, Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Currently some 188 million kilometres from Earth, Vesta is the second-most massive resident of the asteroid belt, a zone between Mars and Jupiter littered with hundreds of thousands of space rocks orbiting the sun. The belt formed some 4.5 billion years ago around the same time and under similar conditions as Earth and the inner planets.

It’s thought that larger chunks such as Vesta could have coalesced into planets had they not been foiled by Jupiter’s gravity. Despite being denied planethood, asteroids are of interest to researchers because they date back to the early solar system.

Powered by ion propulsion instead of conventional rocket fuel, Dawn slid around Vesta on July 15 after a 2.7 billion-km cruise. Most orbit insertions are tricky because a speeding craft has to slow down or risk overshooting its target.

Since Dawn has been travelling slowly relative to Vesta, the orbit capture was a ho-hum event.

“It wasn’t dramatic, but it is exciting,” said chief engineer Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.