NASA's Dawn space craft has taken an image of a mountain on the asteroid Vesta that is higher than Mount Everest, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. It is the latest in spectacular pictures taken by the probe now orbiting the asteroid.
* The mountain, as yet unnamed, is 13 miles high and is surrounded by features that scientists believe were caused by landslides. By contrast Mount Everest is about 5 1/2 miles high.
* Dawn has also imaged a mysterious dark spot on Vesta's equator, about 60 miles wide.
* Dawn was launched from Earth on Sept 27, 2007. It used Mars for a gravity assist in February 2009. It arrived at Vesta in July. It will depart from orbit around Vesta in July 2012 and arrive at Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, in February 2015.
* Dawn used an ion propulsion system to fly to Vesta, a voyage that took nearly four years.
* Dawn's instruments include a framing camera, a visible and infrared spectrometer, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.
* Dawn's primary objective is to gain a better understanding of the origins of the solar system by studying Vesta and then Ceres at close range.
* Dawn is orbiting Vesta at a height of 420 miles, circling the asteroid every 12.3 hours.
* Dawn has completed a series of orbits designed to image Vesta's features straight down. It will now image those same features at an angle. This will aid in the creation of topographical maps of the asteroid as whereas stereo images of individual features. The images are being taken in both visible and infrared light.
* Vesta was discovered by German astronomer and physician Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807.
* Vesta is named after the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth.
* Vesta's orbit around the sun takes 3.63 years.
* Vesta is an irregularly shaped body with an approximant diameter of 530 kilometers.
* Vesta rotates every 5.342 hours.
* Vesta's surface is silicate rock with a nickel-iron core. It is thought not to have accreted a lot of water or may have lost most of its water in the distant past.
* Scientists believe that Vesta suffered a major impact from another body almost its side, creating a crater that reaches deep within its mantle, exposing the material within. This gives Dawn an opportunity to examine that material remotely and perhaps gain some insights into the mantles of other celestial bodies, such as Earth or Mars.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.
