NASA’s Dawn Captures First Image of Nearing Asteroid

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Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne C. Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2011-138 May 11, 2011

NASA's Dawn Captures First Image of Nearing Asteroid

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-138&cid=release_2011-138

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid
Vesta, which will help fine-tune navigation during its approach. Dawn is expected to achieve orbit
around Vesta on July 16, when the asteroid is about 188 million kilometers (117 million miles) from
Earth.

The image from Dawn's framing cameras was taken on May 3 when the spacecraft began its approach
and was approximately 1.21 million kilometers (752,000 miles) from Vesta. The asteroid appears as a
small, bright pearl against a background of stars. Vesta is also known as a protoplanet, because it is a
large body that almost formed into a planet.

"After plying the seas of space for more than a billion miles, the Dawn team finally spotted its target,"
said Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. "This first image hints of detailed portraits to come from Dawn's upcoming visit."

Vesta is 530 kilometers (330 miles) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid
belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes obtained images of the bright orb for about two centuries,
but with little surface detail.

Mission managers expect Vesta's gravity to capture Dawn in orbit on July 16. To enter orbit, Dawn
must match the asteroid's path around the sun, which requires very precise knowledge of the body's
location and speed. By analyzing where Vesta appears relative to stars in framing camera images,
navigators will pin down its location and enable engineers to refine the spacecraft's trajectory.

Dawn will start collecting science data in early August at an altitude of approximately 1,700 miles
(2,700 kilometers) above the asteroid's surface. As the spacecraft gets closer, it will snap multi-angle
images, allowing scientists to produce topographic maps. Dawn will later orbit at approximately 200
kilometers (120 miles) to perform other measurements and obtain closer shots of parts of the surface.
Dawn will remain in orbit around Vesta for one year. After another long cruise phase, Dawn will
arrive in 2015 at its second destination, Ceres, an even more massive body in the asteroid belt.

Gathering information about these two icons of the asteroid belt will help scientists unlock the secrets
of our solar system's early history. The mission will compare and contrast the two giant bodies shaped
by different forces. Dawn's science instruments will measure surface composition, topography and
texture. Dawn will also measure the tug of gravity from Vesta and Ceres to learn more about their
internal structures. The spacecraft's full odyssey will take it on a 5-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile)
journey, which began with its launch in September 2007.

Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The University of California in Los Angeles is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital
Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The framing cameras were
developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in
Katlenburg-Lindau in Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center
(DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin and in coordination with the Institute of Computer
and Communication Network Engineering in Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by
NASA, the Max Planck Society and DLR.

For more information about Dawn, visit http://www.nasa.gov/dawn .

More information about JPL is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov . Follow us via social media,
including Facebook and Twitter. Details are at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/social .

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