NASA‘s Dawn spacecraft has revealed some new and unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. The images and data captured shows the diversity of Vesta‘s surface, and reveal unusual geologic features. Some never previously seen on a asteroid.
Being one of the brightest objects in the solar system, Vesta is the only asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter visible to the naked eye from Earth. Scientists have previously seen brightness variations in previous images of Vesta captures with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, but the new images captured by the Dawn spacecraft found that some areas on Vesta can be nearly twice as bright as others. This could potentially reveal clues about the asteroid’s history.
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