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NASA spacecraft goes into orbit around asteroid tomorrow

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is expected to go into orbit around the asteroid Vesta tomorrow (Australian time). A media release about the below image of Vesta (the best to date) and the orbital insertion can be found here on NASA’s website.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 9, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 41,000 kilometers away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

As an aside, Vesta can be easily found (with a decent finder chart and pair of binoculars) above the Eastern horizon after 9pm each night.

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