NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is underway on its year-long science orbit of Vesta, and the space agency has published this latest image taken with Dawn’s framing camera, showing the asteroid’s south pole.
Dawn is around 6,500 miles (10,500 kilometers) away from Vesta, and took this shot while passing from the protoplanet’s day side to its night side.
Vesta spins on its axis every five hours and 20 minutes. In this photo, the smallest detail visible is about 1.2 miles (2.0 kilometers) across.
Dawn began its orbit of Vesta on July 15, and will continue on to the dwarf planet Ceres next year, also in the asteroid belt.
