Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Satellite Snaps First Image of Target Asteroid

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the shake-it-like-a-polaroid-picture dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA today said that its Dawn spacecraft snapped the first image of the giant asteroid Vesta it hopes to rendezvous with in July. The asteroid is 530 kilometers in diameter, and appears as a small, bright pearl against a background of stars. Vesta is known as a protoplanet, because it is a large body that almost formed into a planet. It's the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, NASA says."

2 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Official NASA Release by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, I'm getting pretty tired of random blogs "reporting" stories they steal from a major outlet and getting credited by Slashdot as the source, scoring a huge number of hits for their plaigiarism, and not infrequently, misrepresenting the story into the bargain..

  2. Re:Error in title by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Its currently orbiting the sun, and will be entering orbit around Vesta during its science phase, so it is technically a satellite.

    Still, generally at JPL we use spacecraft (or just s/c) since a satellite could also refer to a natural body.