Insights · May 13th, 2012
You will recall the recent announcement of an asteroid mining venture. Now you can come along with me and visit the asteroid Vesta, courtesy of a flyby generated by JPL. Their Dawn spacecraft is currently exploring the very large asteroid Vesta, before heading off to examine a second, Ceres.
Ceres and Vesta reside in the extensive zone between Mars and Jupiter together with many other smaller bodies, called the asteroid belt. Vesta is a very large asteroid resembling a small plant or moon more than we might imagine when we think “asteroid.” Dawn arrived at Vesta back in July 2011, and will continue to orbit Vesta collecting data until August 2012, when the craft will head for Ceres. You can learn much more about the mission at JPL Dawn Mission.
For now, let’s ride aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on a virtual flyover of giant asteroid Vesta. Mission data was used to create the topography you see. Waypoints include: Divialia Fossa; Marcia crater, part of the “snowman” feature; and Aricia Tholus.
Glen Hiemstra is a futurist, author, speaker, consultant, Founder of Futurist.com, and founder and Curator of DoTheFuture.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.
