NASA Spacecraft Captures Video of Asteroid Approach

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2011-179 June 13, 2011

NASA Spacecraft Captures Video of Asteroid Approach

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-179&cid=release_2011-179

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists working with NASA's Dawn spacecraft have created a new video
showing the giant asteroid Vesta as the spacecraft approaches this unexplored world in the main
asteroid belt.

The video loops 20 images obtained for navigation purposes on June 1. The images show a dark
feature near Vesta's equator moving from left to right across the field of view as Vesta rotates.
Images also show Vesta's jagged, irregular shape, hinting at the enormous crater known to exist at
Vesta's south pole.

To see the video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn .

The images were obtained by a framing camera during a 30-minute period and show about 30 degrees
of a rotation. The pixel size in these images is approaching the resolution of the best Hubble Space
Telescope images of Vesta.

"Like strangers in a strange land, we're looking for familiar landmarks," said Jian-Yang Li, a Dawn
participating scientist from the University of Maryland, College Park. "The shadowy spot is one of
those -- it appears to match a feature, known as 'Feature B,' from images of Vesta taken by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope."

Before orbiting Vesta on July 16, Dawn will gently slow down to about 75 mph (120 kilometers per
hour). NASA is expecting to release more images on a weekly basis, with more frequent images
available once the spacecraft begins collecting science at Vesta.

"Vesta is coming more and more into focus," said Andreas Nathues, framing camera lead
investigator, based at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau,
Germany. "Dawn's framing camera is working exactly as anticipated."

The Dawn mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the
agency'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. UCLA is responsible
for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn
spacecraft. The framing cameras were developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck
Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germay. The German Aerospace Center
(DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin made significant contributions in coordination with
the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering in Braunschweig. The framing
camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR and NASA. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn . You can follow the mission on
Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .

More information about JPL is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov .

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