Dawn Mission Video Shows Vesta's Coat of Many Colors

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Priscilla Vega / Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-1357/0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Video advisory: 2012-156 June 6, 2012

Dawn Mission Video Shows Vesta's Coat of Many Colors

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-156&cid=release_2012-156

PASADENA, Calif. – A new video from NASA's Dawn mission reveals the dappled,
variegated surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. The animation drapes high-resolution false
color images over a 3-D model of the Vesta terrain constructed from Dawn's
observations. This visualization enables a detailed view of the variation in the material
properties of Vesta in the context of its topography.

The video is available online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1085 .

The colors were chosen to highlight differences in surface composition that are too subtle
for the human eye to see. Scientists are still analyzing what some of the colors mean for
the composition of the surface. But it is clear that the orange material thrown out from
some impact craters is different from the surrounding surface material. Green shows the
relative abundance of iron. Parts of the huge impact basin known as Rheasilvia in Vesta's
southern hemisphere, for instance, have areas with less iron than nearby areas.

Dawn has imaged the majority of the surface of Vesta with the framing camera to provide
this 3-D map. While some areas in the north were in shadow at the time the images were
obtained by the camera, Dawn expects to improve its coverage of Vesta's northern
hemisphere with additional observations. Dawn's viewing geometry also prevented
mapping of a portion of the mountain of the south pole.

The spacecraft is currently spiraling up from its lowest-altitude orbit into its final science
orbit, where its average altitude will be about 420 miles (680 kilometers). Dawn is
scheduled to leave Vesta around Aug. 26.

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, Germany. 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 and
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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