Liftoff! Juno Sets Sail for Jupiter

Today the Juno probe managed a successful liftoff and is now heading towards Jupiter. It will certainly bring many interesting insights of this gas giant, like we have never seen it before. All the coverage around the mission to be found there: NASA website of the Juno Mission

The launch today, in case you missed to watch it live:


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl77aJmuZtg


"NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spreads its solar wings". Full resolution. Source: spacecoalition.com.


A Juno mission overview by NASA:

Link & HD version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bVNYLE5PFQ

Vesta spins your head while rotating!

"In this movie, strung together from a series of images provided by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft, we see a full rotation of Vesta, which occurs over the course of roughly five hours." - Source.

Vesta Full Rotation Movie

Link & HD video: YouTube

Houston, we have feedback from 4 Vesta!

The asteroid mission DAWN is now delivering closeup images of the asteroid 4 Vesta.


Source: NASA / Wiki - Full resolution (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 17, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 9,500 miles (15,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 0.88 miles (1.4 kilometers). Vesta has a mean diameter of 529 km.

Article by space.com:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has beamed home the first close-up photo of the huge asteroid Vesta, just days after entering orbit around the distant space rock.
The new photo, which Dawn snapped for navigation purposes on Sunday (July 17), shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before, researchers said. Astronomers have been observing the gigantic space rock for 200 years, first with ground telescopes and later orbiting observatories, but have never been able to see it so clearly, they added.

"We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, in a statement. [Photos: See the first close-up photos of Vesta]
"This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons," Russell added.


This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it's a large body that almost became a planet, dwarfs all other small bodies in this image, with diameter of approximately 330 miles (530 km). CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA


Read more: NASA Spacecraft Snaps First Close-Up Photo of Huge Asteroid Vesta

From Dusk till DAWN: Going to Vesta, the big asteroid

NASA's Dawn Asteroid Mission now reaches the level of recognizable visual results and interesting explorations.

We now get to see more of the 2nd largest asteroid in the Asteroid Belt:

Source: NASA (with article)

Image description by behindtheblack.com:
Another image of Vesta from Dawn has been released. This image was taken on July 9 from a distance of 26,000 miles away. It is definitely an improvement over the previous image, with more small details becoming visible. However, I once again wonder about the softness of the image. Look at the limb of the planet. It is soft against the black sky. This is not what one would expect from perfectly focused camera. Dawn goes into orbit around Vesta next week.

An info graphic on the DAWN mission for exploring Vesta: How NASA's Dawn Asteroid Mission works (space.com)