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PIA14317: Full-Frame Image of Vesta
NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 24, 2011. Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 15, and will spend a year orbiting the body.
 Target Name:  Vesta
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Dawn 
 Spacecraft:  Dawn
 Instrument:  Framing Camera 
 Product Size:  1024 x 1024 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA14317.tif (1.05 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA14317.jpg (165.2 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 24, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers). Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 15, and will spend a year orbiting the body. After that, the next stop on its itinerary will be an encounter with the dwarf planet Ceres.

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 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

Image Addition Date:
2011-08-01