Dawn Image of Asteroid Vesta: Central Mound at the South Pole

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image — of a central mound in a large structure at the south pole — with its framing camera on August 12, 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The image has a resolution of about 260 meters per pixel.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image — of a central mound in a large structure at the south pole — with its framing camera on August 12, 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The image has a resolution of about 260 meters per pixel.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 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 were 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. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena. More information about Dawn is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Images