spacetoday.net: Dawn images reveal giant mountain on Vesta

Dawn images reveal giant mountain on Vesta

Posted: Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 6:51 AM ET (1051 GMT)
Vesta mountain seen by Dawn (NASA/JPL/Caltech)

New images released by NASA's Dawn mission feature a mountain three times the height of the tallest mountain on Earth. The latest images from the spacecraft, in orbit around the main belt asteroid, show a mountain at Vesta's south pole whose peak is about 22 kilometers above the surrounding terrain. The same image also shows a large cliff in the background, believed to be the at boundary of a large depression at the asteroid's south pole that contains the mountain. Vesta, which arrived at Vesta in July, recently moved into a 680-kilometer-high mapping orbit, from which it will collect images with a resolution of 60 meters.