NASA spacecraft orbiting the huge asteroid Vesta has snapped amazing new photos of the colossal space rock, images that reveal strange features never-before-seen on an asteroid, scientists say.
The new photos of Vesta from NASA's Dawn spacecraft highlight odd, shiny spots that are nearly twice as bright as other parts of the asteroid — suggesting it is original material left over from the space rock's birth 4 billion years ago, NASA officials said today (March 21).
With a width of about 330 miles (530 km), asteroid Vesta is one of the largest and brightest objects in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. NASA's Dawn probe has been orbiting Vesta since 2011 to study the space rock in unprecedented detail.
Dawn's principal investigator, Christopher T Russell, told the meeting that the science team found it hard not to refer to the object as a planet.
He said the rounded asteroid showed evidence of geological processes that characterise rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon.
Vesta is the second most massive of the asteroids, measuring some 530km (330mi) in diameter. It is dominated by a huge crater called Rheasilvia and bears many other scars left by the hammering it has received at the hands of other asteroid belt denizens.
One important transitional feature of Vesta can be found in its topography, or elevation. Vertical elevation on the Moon or Mars might reach tens of kilometres, but these objects are also very large.
"This means the topography is about 1% of the radius," Dr Ralf Jaumann, from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told BBC News. If you go to Vesta, it is 15%, and if you go to the largest outer asteroid - Lutetia - it is 40%."
In short, this mathematical relationship between topography and radius (half an object's diameter), puts Vesta in an intermediate position between small asteroids and rocky planets.
The new photos of Vesta from NASA's Dawn spacecraft highlight odd, shiny spots that are nearly twice as bright as other parts of the asteroid — suggesting it is original material left over from the space rock's birth 4 billion years ago, NASA officials said today (March 21).
With a width of about 330 miles (530 km), asteroid Vesta is one of the largest and brightest objects in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. NASA's Dawn probe has been orbiting Vesta since 2011 to study the space rock in unprecedented detail.
Dawn's principal investigator, Christopher T Russell, told the meeting that the science team found it hard not to refer to the object as a planet.
He said the rounded asteroid showed evidence of geological processes that characterise rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon.
Vesta is the second most massive of the asteroids, measuring some 530km (330mi) in diameter. It is dominated by a huge crater called Rheasilvia and bears many other scars left by the hammering it has received at the hands of other asteroid belt denizens.
One important transitional feature of Vesta can be found in its topography, or elevation. Vertical elevation on the Moon or Mars might reach tens of kilometres, but these objects are also very large.
"This means the topography is about 1% of the radius," Dr Ralf Jaumann, from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told BBC News. If you go to Vesta, it is 15%, and if you go to the largest outer asteroid - Lutetia - it is 40%."
In short, this mathematical relationship between topography and radius (half an object's diameter), puts Vesta in an intermediate position between small asteroids and rocky planets.
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