NASA explores the abandoned planet Vesta

It seems that there is no existence in space, but Vesta's first images are clearly visible in front of us.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which came into orbit around the asteroid Vesta last month, officially started the task of tracking this giant meteorite, which lasted for years.

The Vesta survey from orbit began on August 11, the first of four planning studies conducted from different orbits around Vesta. Binh Minh is the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Vesta's "hometown" and many other meteors.

A trio of craters, nicknamed "Snowman" , seen in this image records the northern hemisphere of the asteroid Vesta, obtained from NASA's Dawn spacecraft camera on 24/24 7/2011, from a distance of 5,200 km.

NASA launched this $ 466 million ship in September 2007. Dawn had to travel nearly four years to reach Vesta, in July 2011. Dawn will take about a year to explore Vesta before moving on to explore a larger asteroid called Ceres , contemplated. will come in 2015.

Binh Minh's first orbit around Vesta is called the survey trajectory , and is the highest orbit, about 1,700 miles (2,700 km) on the surface of the meteorite. The investigation will provide a panorama of this giant asteroid.

Recording Vesta's surface image through visible and infrared wavelengths ( VIR ) is the main goal of orbit survey. Dawn will also make maximum use of frames to collect additional images for the VIR spectral data to form the geological and structural map of the Vesta surface.

Binh Minh recorded this image on Vesta's northern hemisphere after the spacecraft completed its first phase on the dark sides of asteroids on July 23, 2011.

Dawn's ultra-sensitive methods of measuring motion using radio signals hope to bring about the discovery of a giant asteroid's gravity while gamma rays and the detection of neutrons will continue to collect data. base, according to NASA.

The survey period around Vesta is expected to last 20 days, with each trajectory taking nearly three days.

After surveying the orbit, Dawn will enter the scientific trajectory to continue observing Vesta closer. This is also called elevation mapping trajectory, which will start at the end of this September and take about a month to complete.

Dawn will be put into orbit more than 60 times in Vesta's height trajectory map, allowing to capture Vesta's illuminated areas at higher resolutions, and allow the team to even create stereo image.