NASA mission brings protoplanet Vesta into focus

NASA’s first hard look at the protoplanet Vesta has given scientists an unprecedented view of its makeup, terrain and history and revealed that major activity on this ancient rock occurred far more recently than researchers had expected. Images sent back from NASA’s trailblazing Dawn spacecraft reveal the full size of a massive crater in the southern hemisphere and indicate that it may have been made just 1 billion years ago, well after Vesta formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, according to one of half a dozen studies published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. “We have been able to use a time machine and take our thoughts and understandings right back to the beginning,” said UCLA geophysicist Christopher Russell, the Dawn mission’s principal investigator.