Dawn Exceeds Wildest Expectations as First Ever Spacecraft to Orbit a Protoplanet – Vesta

on july 15 dawn became the first space craft to orbit a proto planet named vesta. dawn is going to study vesta for a year as new features on the surface of dawn is going to change and take new pictures which will lead to answers of earlier collisions and study its poles. read the full story for more details on dawn studying vesta.
www.universetoday.com...
dawn.jpl.nasa.gov...
here is some pictures of vest captured by dawn.

these look so fake... especially the first one

well they are not fake.

Originally posted by alex1
well they are not fake.

so they say but unfortuanatly im saying there fake.. atleast some of them.. dont tell me the first one doesnt look computer animated..

Wow totally awesome! I can't wait to see the images Dawn sends back, unedited I hope. Thanks for the great space exploration update Alex1! I was kinda bummed about our manned space program's apparent leap backward with the end of the Shuttle program so this has given me a little boost of moral that We Are Still Out There! I wonder what else is out in that asteroid belt?

It would be pretty cool if we could send more probes out and just have them take up position around the Solar System as a sorta ongoing data collection, like a spycam, see what comes by, especially there in the asteroid belt

I will be checking up on Dawn now to get my Space fix, thanks again Alex1!

reply to post by shadowreborn89



Oh, by all means, enlighten us.
Tell us what these images should look like so that, in your expert opinion, they would look genuine.

Be sure to include a description of the imaging system on "Dawn" so that we can understand why what you expect them to look like conforms better with the technology used than the actual photographs presented.

reply to post by shadowreborn89

doesnt look computer animated..

lol it is computer animated, it's a mapping by a spacecraft, but it's not fake......

dawn.jpl.nasa.gov...

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 9, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers).

dont tell me the first one doesnt look computer animated..

Which one do you mean? The one under the title here has been enhanced:

www.universetoday.com...

Dawn obtained the raw image of Vesta with its framing camera on July 9, 2011 - which has been enhanced and annotated here.

Those on NASA site should be original, tough, but keep in mind they are compressed jpgs.

Even more interesting is the research that was announced just before it crossed vesta. The research claims that earth's past and future orbit can't be reconstructed beyond 60 million years.
To view the pictures go here: A&A

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a new study of the orbital evolution of minor planets Ceres and Vesta, a few days before the Dawn spacecraft enters Vesta's orbit. A team of astronomers found that close encounters among these bodies lead to strong chaotic behavior of their orbits, as well as of the Earth's eccentricity. This means, in particular, that the Earth's past orbit cannot be reconstructed beyond 60 million years.

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing numerical simulations of the long-term evolution of the orbits of minor planets Ceres and Vesta, which are the largest bodies in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres is 6000 times less massive than the Earth and almost 80 times less massive than our Moon. Vesta is almost four times less massive than Ceres. These two minor bodies, long thought to peacefully orbit in the asteroid belt, are found to affect their large neighbors and, in particular, the Earth in a way that had not been anticipated. This is showed in the new astronomical computations released by Jacques Laskar from Paris Observatory and his colleagues [1].


Fig. 1. Observations of Ceres by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
© NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (University of Maryland) and G. Bacon (STScI).

Although small, Ceres and Vesta gravitationally interact together and with the other planets of the Solar System. Because of these interactions, they are continuously pulled or pushed slightly out of their initial orbit. Calculations show that, after some time, these effects do not average out. Consequently, the bodies leave their initial orbits and, more importantly, their orbits are chaotic, meaning that we cannot predict their positions. The two bodies also have a significant probability of impacting each other, estimated at 0.2% per billion year. Last but not least, Ceres and Vesta gravitationally interact with the Earth, whose orbit also becomes unpredictable after only 60 million years. This means that the Earth's eccentricity, which affects the large climatic variations on its surface, cannot be traced back more than 60 million years ago. This is indeed bad news for Paleoclimate studies.

This unexpected discovery comes at a time when both objects are the targets of the NASA/Dawn mission. The Dawn probe will encounter Ceres in February 2015. At present, Dawn is approaching Vesta, and will enter its orbit this coming Saturday, July 16, 2011.


Fig. 2. Vesta. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 1, 2011.
It was taken from a distance about 100,000 kilometers away from Vesta.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

reply to post by Nobama


Just let the guy drift off into his fear, distrust, mongering, fantasy world, he obviously is not interested in an education, besides, he's not paying you anything, probably not even attention.

LOL FAKE !

ya.. they sent an Ion thrusted spaceship to the asteroid/moon just to have it orbit it for no reason..
or is your theory they didn't even send a probe ?

damn.. we're gonna stay cavemen forever..

I think the question of why send live humans to these proto planets instead of the moon, which is much closer and we've been there and know the conditions. I love the space probes cruising around our Solar System though! We need more Ion Thrusters Scotty!

The JPL site has some new pics up and they're closer and uber cool! Thanks again Alex1 for the thread. I love this stuff! Some day maybe we all can visit the stars.