Dawn

Current progress of Dawn to Vesta

Dawn approaches.

First images of Vesta.

Hopefully we'll be seeing it in much greater detail soon!

There have been a few more images released, certainly looks like the landscapes on Vesta are quite diverse.

Hmmm looks like we lost track of this mission after the arrival at Vesta.

Ceres looks like it should be a pretty interesting place, apparently it has plumes of water vapor erupting from its surface.

I'm a bit hesitant to call it "plumes" as it could just be sublimation if I understand this right.

It's worth reading this post on Dr Schenk's 3D House of Satellites. In particular, note the following:

Quote :

Don’t expect lots of images during approach to Ceres, however. To reach Ceres, the spacecraft must continue ion thrusting all the way in, and we can only point the cameras when the engines are turned off for brief intervals to peak at our target. That's why we won't be seeing pictures every day! We can't actually take pictures every day and still get to our target. We should be getting a set of images once every 1-2 weeks during approach, though, and the science team and those watching with us will be most eager to see what those images tell us as we near our target.

Regardless, Ceres has the potential to be quite an interesting target!

Now all of 27 pixels across!
http://spaceref.com/asteroids/dawn-delivers-new-image-of-ceres.html

Looks like an equatorial chasm? What about that white spot? Reminds me a little bit of Wunda on Umbriel...

-M-

And closer again... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4485

Could those white spots be surface ice?

-M-