NASA releases asteroid flyby video from Dawn probe

NASA has released a new video showing Vesta, giant queen of the asteroid belt, in unprecedented detail. One of the highlights of the new data, collected by NASA's ion-engine space probe dawn in orbit around the mighty space boulder, is an espceially precipitous region located at the body's south pole. The space agency …

[Mage]

Still no sighting of the Soup Dragon?

[LiteWeight72]

FAIL! no mention of the smiley face on the South pole of it!

Smiley face icon, in honour of the one on the pole

[Mondo the Magnificent]

Reminds me..

...of a close up of a CoCo Pop (Moons & Stars) in B&W...

Perhaps I shouldn't stare into my cereal bowl whilst under the influence of Mescaline

[Ragarath]

Right we can get there, now lets start mining them. Might make us stop chewing up the planet and stop all the green naysayers too.

Go because well they need to start somewhere :)

[Steven Roper]

@ Ragarath

No, because the kind of compulsive whingers you're talking about will form the Society for the Preservation of Asteroids or something, insisting that these untouched marvels of nature should remain untouched.

Remember, these people are born to complain. They have to have something to whinge about.

[Paulplex]

It's a fake I tell you, fake!

Take a Malteaser and carefully nibble off the chocolate, revealing the honeycomb underneath. Note a similarity? It's very similar to this video.

Nasa faked the moonlandings and now they're faking this too!

[Christoph]

It's not a Malteser, it's a walnut. That ridge is where the two halves join.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. That opening shot I'm thinking "Damn that's a big walnut"

[Wombling_Free]

Underwhelming.

Vesta was about the most likely spot to find some nice big alien strip mines, or a least a whopping big graffito of some Xenu genitalia.

Looks like we are alone, after all.

Bugger.

[Head]

Hmmm

Wow, very nice imagery!

Will that probe also be doing a flyby of Ceres as well? I hope so.

[Mike Flugennock]

flyby of Ceres?

You hope correctly:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/mission/index.html

Dawn finishes up at Vesta and departs for Ceres in July of next year, arriving at Ceres in February of 2015.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay

Scientists: 299,792,458

Bronze-age shepherds: 0

[bugalugs]

@yay

scientists 299,792,458

bronze-age shepherds 1*

*subject to confirmation

[Purlieu]

Everest

Again, like last time, you omit the fact that there is no sea on the asteroid. Taken from the lowest point on Earth (Challenger Deep for example) to the top of Everest easily beats this puny 15km pimple. Please keep comparisons equal.

Meanwhile, just in case, I for one welcome out pimply asteroid based space mountain masters

[Cochituate]

Tire tracks?

What's with the tire track feature that seems to be common with so many of the asteroids we've closely observed? Have the boffins come up with any explanation for this sight?

[Pete Rowley]

"several hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide". This interchangeability surely raises important questions about imprecision in the milliwales?