It has been a long, 1.7 billion-mile journey into the asteroid belt for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, launched on September 26, 2007. The spacecraft finally arrived at its first stop at asteroid Vesta on July 16, 2011.
Dawn entered orbit around Vesta and wasted no time getting its bearings by taking the most detailed photographs of the asteroid yet seen, including an image of its dark side (below).
Additionally, Dawn is paying a visit to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The spacecraft will orbit around Vesta for a year before proceeding on to arrive at Ceres in February of 2015.
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| The dark side of asteroid Vesta (Image: NASA) |
