Tag: "dwarf planet"

Operation Vesta: Pluto's Devious Plan to Regain Status?

Operation Vesta: Pluto's Devious Plan to Regain Status?

With the New Horizons spacecraft hurtling toward its 2014 encounter with Pluto, and with the Dawn spacecraft now at its most up-close and personal encounter with Vesta, we are in the process of learning scads of information about two objects that are among the least understood and most under-explored bodies in the Solar System.

 
Ben Burress

Post on Dec 30, 2011 by from

Dawn of A New Era

Dawn of A New Era

We have achieved orbit – that is, NASA's Dawn spacecraft is now orbiting and studying the large asteroid Vesta.

 
Ben Burress

Post on Aug 12, 2011 by

Dawn: Mission to Explore Strange New Worlds

Dawn: Mission to Explore Strange New Worlds

We are soon to explore a new world, one that we haven't seen up close before: the asteroid Vesta. What will we find, and why are we even interested in what amounts to a mega-mountain of rock hurtling through space?

 
Ben Burress

Post on Jun 30, 2011 by

Planetary Robotic Roundup

Planetary Robotic Roundup

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury-artist concept. Photo by: NASA I've been waiting for the "whole story" on Martian ice at the Phoenix lander site to unfold more completely, but the chemical analyses have not yet run their full courses-so I've decided to widen the focus on this blog to give a status report on current [...]

 
Ben Burress

Post on Jul 04, 2008 by