Virtual Flight Over Asteroid Vesta
What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta?
Animators from the
German Aerospace Center recently took actual images and height data from
NASA's Dawn
mission currently visiting Vesta to
generate such a virtual movie.
The above video begins with a sequence above
Divalia Fossa, an unusual pair of troughs running parallel over heavily cratered terrain.
Next, the virtual spaceship explores
Vesta's 60-km
Marcia Crater, showing numerous vivid details.
Last, Dawn images were digitally recast with
exaggerated height to better reveal
Vesta's 5-km high mountain Aricia Tholus.
Currently,
Dawn is
rising away
from Vesta after being close enough to obtain the
most detailed
surface images and
gravity measurements of the Solar System's second largest asteroid.
In August,
Dawn is
scheduled
to blast away from Vesta and head toward
Ceres, the Solar System's largest asteroid.