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Dawn spacecraft gets cozy with massive asteroid
August 1, 2011 - 4:59 AM
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists are busy sifting through images of the massive asteroid Vesta taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft.
Dawn last month entered orbit around the 330-mile-wide rocky body and began beaming back close-ups of the cratered surface.
The probe will officially start collecting science data next week once it is 1,700 miles from the surface.
It will study Vesta for a year before moving on to a bigger asteroid Ceres.
The $466 million mission is managed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
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