Image: Close-up View of Craters in South Equatorial Region on Vesta As Seen From Orbit

In this image, obtained by the framing camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, various craters are visible in the southern equatorial region of the giant asteroid Vesta.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. It is a project of the Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.

The framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by NASA, the Max Planck Society and DLR. More information about Dawn is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn . Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Larger Image