NASA Dawn Mission: All Eyes on Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 9, 2011.

It was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it is a large body that almost became a planet.

Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers).


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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA