This image from supercomputer simulations shows how some exoplanets form as 'flattened Smarties' rather than spheres. It shows the same planet from the top (left) and the side (right.) The images are from supercomputer simulations of planetary formation. Image Credit: Fenton and Stamatellos 2024.
One of contemporary astronomy’s most pressing questions concerns planet formation. We can see more deeply than ever into very young solar systems where planets are taking shape in the disks around young stars. But our view is still clouded by all the gas and dust in these young systems.
The picture of planet formation just got cloudier with the discovery that some young planets are shaped like flattened candies rather than spheres.
Artist rendition of the new “sandwiched planet formation” theory examined for this study. (Credit: University of Warwick/Mark A. Garlick; License Type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0))
A recent study presented at the National Astronomy Meeting 2023 (NAM2023) examines a newly discovered planetary formation theory that challenges previous notions on how planets are formed in the disks of gas and dust surrounding young stars, also known as protoplanetary disks. Along with being presented at NAM2023, the study has also been submitted for peer-review to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and holds the potential to help scientists better understand not only how planets form, but how life could form on them, as well.
This artist's illustration shows two gas giant exoplanets orbiting the young star PDS 70. These planets are still growing by accreting material from a surrounding disk. In the process, they have gravitationally carved out a large gap in the disk. The gap extends from distances equivalent to the orbits of Uranus and Neptune in our solar system. Image Credit: J. Olmsted (STScI)
370 light years away from us, a solar system is making baby planets. The star at the center of it all is young, only about 6 million years old. And its babies are two enormous planets, likely both gas giants, nursing on gaseous matter from the star’s circumsolar disk.
A photo of the full moon, taken from Apollo 11 on its way home to Earth, from about 18,520 km (10,000 nm) away. Credit: NASA
The asteroid that punched an “eye” in the Moon is about 10 times more massive than originally thought. Researchers say a protoplanet-sized body slammed into the Moon about 3.8 billion years ago, creating the area called Imbrium Basin that forms the right eye of the so-called “Man in the Moon.” Additionally, this large body also indicates that protoplanet-sized asteroids may have been common in the early solar system, putting the “heavy” into the Late Heavy Bombardment.
“We show that Imbrium was likely formed by an absolutely enormous object, large enough to be classified as a protoplanet,” said Pete Schultz from Brown University. “This is the first estimate for the Imbrium impactor’s size that is based largely on the geological features we see on the Moon.”
Mare Imbrium or the Sea of Showers is highlighted in this map of the moon. The other large, dark spots are also basins created from asteroid impacts. Credit: NASA
The Imbrium Basin is easily seen when the Moon is full, as a dark patch in the Moon’s northwestern quadrant. It is about 750 miles across, and a closer look shows the basin is surrounded by grooves and gashes that radiate out from the center of the basin, plus a second set of grooves with a different alignment that have puzzled astronomers for decades.
To re-enact the impact, Schultz used the Vertical Gun Range at the NASA Ames Research Center to conduct hypervelocity impact experiments. This facility has a 14-foot cannon that fires small projectiles at up to 25,750 km/hr (16,000 miles per hour), and high-speed cameras record the ballistic dynamics. During his experiments, Schultz noticed that in addition to the usual crater ejecta from the impact, the impactors themselves – if large enough — had a tendency to break apart when they first made contact with the surface. Then these chunks would continue to travel at a high speeds, skimming along and plowing across the surface, creating grooves and gouges.
Grooves and gashes associated with the Imbrium Basin on the Moon have long been puzzling. New research shows how some of these features were formed and uses them to estimate the size of the Imbrium impactor. The study suggests it was big enough to be considered a protoplanet. NASA/Northeast Planetary Data Center/Brown University
The results showed the second set of grooves were likely formed by these large chunks of the impactor that sheared off on initial contact with the surface.
“The key point is that the grooves made by these chunks aren’t radial to the crater,” Schultz said in a press release. “They come from the region of first contact. We see the same thing in our experiments that we see on the Moon — grooves pointing up-range, rather than the crater.”
The second set of groove trajectories could be used to estimate the impactor’s size. Schultz worked with David Crawford of the Sandia National Laboratories to generate computer models of the physics of various sizes of impactors, and they were able to estimate the impactor that created Imbrium Basin to be more than 250 km (150 miles) across, which is two times larger in diameter and 10 times more massive than previous estimates. This puts the impactor in the range of being the size of a protoplanet.
“That’s actually a low-end estimate,” Schultz said. “It’s possible that it could have been as large as 300 kilometers.”
Previous estimates, Schultz said, were based solely on computer models and yielded a size estimate of only about 50 miles in diameter.
Schultz and his colleagues also used the same methods to estimate the sizes of impactors related to several other basins on the Moon, for example, the Moscoviense and Orientale basins on the Moon’s far side, which yielded impactor sizes of 100 and 110 kilometers across respectively, larger than some previous estimates.
Combining these new estimates with the fact that there are even larger impact basins on the Moon and other planets, Schultz concluded that protoplanet-sized asteroids may have been common in the early solar system, and he called them the “lost giants” of the Late Heavy Bombardment, a period of intense comet and asteroid bombardment thought to have pummeled the Moon and all the planets including the Earth about 4 to 3.8 billion years ago.
“The Moon still holds clues that can affect our interpretation of the entire solar system,” he said. “Its scarred face can tell us quite a lot about what was happening in our neighborhood 3.8 billion years ago.”
This artist's conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave
How did the Solar System’s planets come to be? The leading theory is something known as the “protoplanet hypothesis”, which essentially says that very small objects stuck to each other and grew bigger and bigger — big enough to even form the gas giants, such as Jupiter.
But how the heck did that happen? More details below.
Birthing the Sun
About 4.6 billion years ago, as the theory goes, the location of today’s Solar System was nothing more than a loose collection of gas and dust — what we call a nebula. (Orion’s Nebula is one of the most famous examples you can see in the night sky.)
The Orion Nebula. Image Credit: Vasco Soeiro
Then something happened that triggered a pressure change in the center of the cloud, scientists say. Perhaps it was a supernova exploding nearby, or a passing star changing the gravity. Whatever the change, however, the cloud collapsed and created a disc of material, according to NASA.
The center of this disc saw a great increase in pressure that eventually was so powerful that hydrogen atoms loosely floating in the cloud began to come into contact. Eventually, they fused and produced helium, kickstarting the formation of the Sun.
The Sun was a hungry youngster — it ate up 99% of what was swirling around, NASA says — but this still left 1% of the disc available for other things. And this is where planet formation began.
These images are some of the first to be taken during Spitzer’s warm mission — a new phase that began after the telescope, which operated for more than five-and-a-half years, ran out of liquid coolant. They show a star formation region (DR22 in Cygnus),DR22, in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Time of chaos
The Solar System was a really messy place at this time, with gas and dust and debris floating around. But planet formation appears to have happened relatively rapidly. Small bits of dust and gas began to clump together. The young Sun pushed much of the gas out to the outer Solar System and its heat evaporated any ice that was nearby.
Over time, this left rockier planets closer to the Sun and gas giants that were further away. But about four billion or so years ago, an event called the “late heavy bombardment” resulted in small bodies pelting the bigger members of the Solar System. We almost lost the Earth when a Mars-sized object crashed into it, as the theory goes.
What caused this is still under investigation, but some scientists believe it was because the gas giants were moving around and perturbing smaller bodies at the fringe of the Solar System. At any rate, in simple terms, the clumping together of protoplanets (planets in formation) eventually formed the planets.
Artist’s impression of a Mars-sized object crashing into the Earth, starting the process that eventually created our Moon. Credit: Joe Tucciarone
We can still see leftovers of this process everywhere in the Solar System. There is an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that perhaps would have coalesced into a planet had Jupiter’s gravity not been so strong. And we also have comets and asteroids that are sometimes considered referred to as “building blocks” of our Solar System.
We’ve described in detail what happened in our own Solar System, but the important takeaway is that many of these processes are at work in other places. So when we speak about exoplanet systems — planets beyond our Solar System — it is believed that a similar sequence of events took place. But how similar is still being learned.
Making the case
One major challenge to this theory, of course, is no one (that we know of!) was recording the early history of the Solar System. That’s because the Earth wasn’t even formed yet, so it was impossible for any life — let alone intelligent life — to keep track of what was happening to the planets around us.
Artist’s impression of the Solar Nebula. Image credit: NASA
There are two major ways astronomers get around this problem. The first is simple observation. Using powerful telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers can actually observe dusty discs around young planets. So we have numerous examples of stars with planets being born around them.
The second is using modelling. To test their observational hypotheses, astronomers run computer modelling to see if (mathematically speaking) the ideas work out. Often they will try to use different conditions during the simulation, such as perhaps a passing star triggering changes in the dust cloud. If the model holds after many runs and under several conditions, it’s more likely to be true.
That said, there still are some complications. We can’t use modelling yet to exactly predict how the planets of the Solar System ended up where they were. Also, in fine detail our Solar System is kind of a messy place, with phenomena such as asteroids with moons.
This animation, created from individual radar images, clearly show the rough outline of 2004 BL86 and its newly-discovered moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
And we need to have a better understanding of external factors that could affect planet formation, such as supernovae (explosions of old, massive stars.) But the protoplanet hypothesis is the best we’ve got — at least for now.
We have written many articles about the protoplanet hypothesis for Universe Today. Here’s an article about how the Solar System was formed, and here’s an article about protoplanets. We’ve also recorded a series of episodes of Astronomy Cast about every planet in the Solar System. Start here, Episode 49: Mercury.
Image at 7 mm wavelength of the dusty disk around the star HD 169142 obtained with the Very Large Array (VLA) at 7 mm wavelength. The positions of the protoplanet candidates are marked with plus signs (+) (Osorio et al. 2014, ApJ, 791, L36). The insert in the upper right corner shows, at the same scale, the bright infrared source in the inner disk cavity, as observed with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at 3.8 micron wavelength (Reggiani et al. 2014, ApJ, 792, L23).
Huge disks of dust and gas encircle many young stars. Some contain circular gaps — likely the result of forming planets carving out cavities along their orbital paths — that make the disks look more like ripples in a pond than flat pancakes.
But astronomers know only a few examples, including the archetypal disk surrounding Beta Pictoris, of this transitional stage between the original disk and the young planetary system. And they have never spotted a forming planet.
Two independent research teams think they’ve observed precisely this around the star HD 169142, a young star with a disk that extends up to 250 astronomical units (AU), roughly six times greater than the average distance from the Sun to Pluto.
Mayra Osorio from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain and colleagues first explored HD 169142’s disk with the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. The 27 radio dishes configured in a Y-shape allowed the team to detect centimeter-sized dust grains. Then combining their results with infrared data, which traces the presence of microscopic dust, the group was able to see two gaps in the disk.
One gap is located between 0.7 and 20 AU, and the second larger gap is located between 30 and 70 AU. In our Solar System the first would begin at the orbit of Venus and end at the orbit of Uranus, while the second would begin at the orbit of Neptune, pass Pluto’s orbit, and extend beyond.
“This structure already suggested that the disk was being modified by two planets or sub-stellar objects, but, additionally, the radio data reveal the existence of a clump of material within the external gap, located approximately at the distance of Neptune’s orbit, which points to the existence of a forming planet,” said Mayra Osorio in a news release.
Maddalena Reggiani from the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich and colleagues then tried to search for infrared sources in the gaps using the Very Large Telescope. They found a bright signal in the inner gap, which likely corresponds to a forming planet or a young brown dwarf, an object that isn’t massive enough to kick start nuclear fusion.
The team was unable to confirm an object in the second gap, likely due to technical limitations. Any object with a mass less than 18 times Jupiter’s mass will remain hidden in the data.
Future observations will shed more light on the exotic system, hopefully allowing astronomers to better understand how planets first form around young stars.
Both papers have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This image from the NACO system on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows a candidate protoplanet in the disc of gas and dust around the young star HD100546. Credit: ESO.
Astronomers have taken what is likely the first-ever direct image of a planet that is still undergoing its formation, embedded in its “womb” of gas and dust. The protoplanet, about the size of Jupiter, is in the disc surrounding a young star, HD 100546, located 335 light-years from Earth.
If this discovery is confirmed, astronomers say this it will greatly improve our understanding of how planets form and allow astronomers to test the current theories against an observable target.
“So far, planet formation has mostly been a topic tackled by computer simulations,” said Sascha Quanz, from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who led an international team using the Very Large Telescope to make the observations. “If our discovery is indeed a forming planet, then for the first time scientists will be able to study the planet formation process and the interaction of a forming planet and its natal environment empirically at a very early stage.”
The protoplanet appears as a faint blob in the circumstellar disc of HD 100546, a well-studied star, and astronomers have already discovered other protoplanets orbiting this star. In 2003, astronomers used a technique called “nulling interferometry” to reveal not only the planetary disk, but also discovered a gap in the disk, where a Jupiter-like planet is probably forming about six times farther form the star than Earth is from the Sun. This newly found planet candidate is located in the outer regions of the system, about ten times further out.
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The team used the VLT along with a near-infrared coronograph in an adaptive optics instrument called NACO, which enabled them to suppresses the bright light of the star, combined with pioneering data analysis techniques.
The current theory of planet formation is based mostly on observations of our own solar system. Since 1995, when the first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was discovered, several hundred planetary systems have been found, opening up new opportunities for scientists studying planetary formation. But until now, none have been “caught in the act” in the process of being formed, while still embedded in the disc of material around their young parent star.
This composite image shows a view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (left) and from the NACO system on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (right) of the gas and dust around the young star HD 100546. The Hubble visible-light image shows the outer disc of gas and dust around the star. The new infrared VLT picture of a small part of the disc shows a candidate protoplanet. Both pictures were taken with a special coronagraph that suppresses the light from the brilliant star. The position of the star is marked with a red cross in both panels. Credit: ESO/NASA/ESA/Ardila et al.
But in studying the disc around HD 100546, astronomers have spotted several features that support the current theory that giant planets grow by capturing some of the gas and dust that remains after the formation of a star. They have seen structures in the dusty circumstellar disc, which could be caused by interactions between the planet and the disc, as well as indications that the surroundings of the protoplanet are being heated up by the formation process.
The astronomers are doing follow-up observations to confirm the discovery, as it is possible that the detected signal could have come from an unrelated background source, or it could possibly be a fully formed planet which was ejected from its original orbit closer to the star. But the researchers say the most likely explanation is that this is actually the first protplanet that has been directly imaged.
Vesta’s Eastern Hemisphere Floats in Space in 3-D. This anaglyph shows the varied topography of Vesta’s eastern hemisphere from craters in the north, the equatorial troughs and the huge mountain at the Souh Pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
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The giant Asteroid Vesta literally floats in space in a new high resolution 3-D image of the battered bodies Eastern Hemisphere taken by NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter.
Haul out your red-cyan 3-D anaglyph glasses and lets go whirling around Vesta and sledding down mountains to greet the alien Snowman! The sights are fabulous !
The Dawn imaging group based at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Berlin, Germany and led by team member Ralf Jaumann has released a trio of new high resolution 3-D images that are the most vivid anaglyphs yet published by the international science team.
The lead anaglyph shows the highly varied topography of the Eastern Hemisphere of Vesta and was taken during the final approach phase as Dawn was about 5,200 kilometers (3,200 miles) away and preparing to achieve orbit in July 2011.
The heavily cratered northern region is at top and is only partially illuminated because of Vesta’s tilted angle to the Sun at that time of year. Younger craters are overlain onto many older and more degraded craters. The equatorial region is dominated by the mysterious troughs which encircle most of Vesta and may have formed as a result of a gargantuan gong, eons ago.
The southern hemisphere exhibits fewer craters than in the northern hemisphere. Look closely at the bottom left and you’ll see the huge central mountain complex of the Rheasilvia impact basin visibly protruding out from Vesta’s south polar region.
This next 3-D image shows a close-up of the South Pole Mountain at the center of the Rheasilvia Impact basin otherwise known as the “Mount Everest of Vesta”.
The Mount Everest of Vesta in 3-D
This anaglyph shows the central complex and huge mountain in Vesta’s Rheasilvia impact basin at the South Pole. Does water ice lurk beneath the South Pole ?
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
The central complex is approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) in diameter and is approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) tall and is therefore about two and a half times taller than Earth’s Mount Everest!
Be sure to take a long look inside the deep craters and hummocky terrain surrounding “Mount Everest”.
A recent study concludes that, in theory, Vesta’s interior is cold enough for water ice to lurk beneath the North and South poles.
Finally lets gaze at the trio of craters that make up the “Snowman” in the 3-D image snapped in August 2011 as Dawn was orbiting at about 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) altitude. The three craters are named Minucia, Marcia and Calpurnia from top to bottom. Their diameters respectively are; 24 kilometers (15 miles), 53 kilometers (33 miles) and 63 kilometers (40 miles).
3-D image of Vesta’s “Snowman” craters
The three craters are named Minucia, Marcia and Calpurnia from top to bottom. They are 24 kilometers (15 miles), 53 kilometers (33 miles) and 63 kilometers (40 miles) in diameter, respectively. Image resolution is about 250 meters (820 feet) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
It is likely that Marcia and Calpurnia formed from the impact of a binary asteroid and that Minucia formed in a later impact. The smooth region around the craters is the ejecta blanket.
Dawn Orbiting Vesta above the “Snowman” craters
This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta above the Snowman craters. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn's framing cameras. Dawn is an international collaboration of the US, Germany and Italy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Vesta is the second most massive asteroid in the main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is 330 miles (530 km) in diameter.
Dawn is the first spacecraft from Earth to visit Vesta. It achieved orbit in July 2011 for a year long mission. Dawn will fire up its ion propulsion thrusters in July 2012 to spiral out of orbit and sail to Ceres, the biggest asteroid of them all !
Vesta and Ceres are also considered to be protoplanets.
Dawn snaps First Full-Frame Image of Asteroid Vesta. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 24, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers). Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 15, and will spend a year orbiting the body. After that, the next stop on its itinerary will be an encounter with the dwarf planet Ceres. The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig, Germany. The framing camera project is funded by NASA, the Max Planck Society and DLR. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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NASA has just released the first full frame images of Vesta– and they are thrilling! The new images unveil Vesta as a real world with extraordinarily varied surface details and in crispy clear high resolution for the first time in human history.
Vesta appears totally alien and completely unique. “It is one of the last major uncharted worlds in our solar system,” says Dr. Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Now that we are in orbit we can see that it’s a unique and fascinating place.”
“We have been calling Vesta the smallest terrestrial planet,” said Chris Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator at the UCLA. “The latest imagery provides much justification for our expectations. They show that a variety of processes were once at work on the surface of Vesta and provide extensive evidence for Vesta’s planetary aspirations.”
Dawn launch on September 27, 2007 by a Delta II Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer
The newly published image (shown above) was taken at a distance of 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers) by Dawn’s framing camera as the probe continues spiraling down to her initial science survey orbit of some 1,700 miles (2,700 km) altitude. The new images show the entire globe all the way since the giant asteroid turns on its axis once every five hours and 20 minutes.
Vesta and its new moon – Dawn – are approximately 114 million miles (184 million kilometers) distant away from Earth.
“The new observations of Vesta are an inspirational reminder of the wonders unveiled through ongoing exploration of our solar system,” said Jim Green, planetary division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Dark Side of Vesta Captured by Dawn
NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image over the northern hemisphere with its framing camera on July 23, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers) away from the giant asteroid Vesta. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Dawn was launched atop a Delta II Heavy booster rocket in September 2007, took a gravity assist as it flew past Mars and has been thrusting with exotic ion propulsion for about 70 percent of the time ever since.
Dawn will spend 1 year collecting science data in orbit around Vesta before heading off to the Dwarf Planet Ceres.
The science team has just completed their press briefing. Watch for my more detailed report upcoming soon.
And don’t forget JUNO launches on Aug 5 – It’s an exciting week for NASA Space Science and I’ll be reporting on the Jupiter orbiter’s blastoff and more – as Opportunity closes in on Spirit Point !
NASA’s groundbreaking interplanetary science is all inter connected – because Vesta and Ceres failed to form into full-fledged planets thanks to the disruptive influence of Jupiter.
Enhanced Image of Vesta Captured by Dawn on July 9, 2011. NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011. Dawn obtained the raw image of Vesta with its framing camera on July 9, 2011 - which has been enhanced and annotated. It was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA. Enhanced and annotated by Ken Kremer
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NASA’s super exciting Dawn mission to the Asteroid Belt marked a major milestone in human history by becoming the first ever spacecraft from Planet Earth to achieve orbit around a Protoplanet – Vesta – on July 16. Dawn was launched in September 2007 and was 117 million miles (188 million km) distant from Earth as it was captured by Asteroid Vesta.
Dawn’s achievements thus far have already exceeded the wildest expectations of the science and engineering teams, and the adventure has only just begun ! – so say Dawn’s Science Principal Investigator Prof. Chris Russell, Chief Engineer Dr. Marc Rayman (think Scotty !) and NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green in exclusive new interviews with Universe Today.
As you read these words, Dawn is steadily unveiling new Vesta vistas never before seen by a human being – and in ever higher resolution. And it’s only made possible via the revolutionary and exotic ion propulsion thrusters propelling Dawn through space (think Star Trek !). That’s what NASA, science and space exploration are all about.
“Dawn is in orbit, remains in good health and is continuing to perform all of its functions,” Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., told me. “Indeed, that is how we know it achieved orbit. The confirmation received in a routine communications session that it has continued thrusting is all we needed.”
Image of Vesta Captured by Dawn on July 9, 2011. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 9, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Dawn entered orbit at about 9900 miles (16000 km) altitude after a nearly 4 year journey of 1.73 billion miles.
Over the next few weeks, the spacecrafts primary task is to gradually spiral down to its initial science operations orbit, approximately 1700 miles above the pock marked surface.
Vesta is the second most massive object in the main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn is the first probe to orbit an object in the Asteroid Belt.
I asked Principal Investigator Chris Russell from UCLA for a status update on Dawn and to describe what the team can conclude from the images and data collected thus far.
“The Dawn team is really, really excited right now,” Russell replied.
“This is what we have been planning now for over a decade and to finally be in orbit around our first ‘protoplanet’ is fantastic.”
“The images exceed my wildest dreams. The terrain both shows the stress on the Vestan surface exerted by 4.5 billion years of collisions while preserving evidence [it seems] of what may be internal processes. The result is a complex surface that is very interesting and should be very scientifically productive.”
NASA's Dawn spacecraft, illustrated in this artist's concept, is propelled by ion engines to Protoplanets Vesta and Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL
“The team is looking at our low resolution images and trying to make preliminary assessments but the final answers await the higher resolution data that is still to come.”
Russell praised the team and described how well the spacecraft was operating.
“The flight team has been great on this project and deserves a lot of credit for getting us to Vesta EARLY and giving us much more observation time than we had planned,” Russell told me.
“And they have kept the spacecraft healthy and the instruments safe. Now we are ready to work in earnest on our science observations.”
Dawn will remain in orbit at Vesta for one year. Then it will fire its ion thrusters and head for the Dwarf Planet Ceres – the largest object in the Asteroid Belt. Dawn will then achieve another major milestone and become the first spacecraft ever to orbit two celestial objects.
Dawn launch on September 27, 2007 by a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer
Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA HQ in Washington, DC, summed up his feelings about Dawn in this way;
“Getting Dawn into orbit is an amazing achievement,” Green told me.
“Instead of the ‘fire the thrusters full blast’ we just sort of slid into orbit letting gravity grab the spacecraft with a light tug. This gives us great confidence that the big challenge down the road of getting into orbit around Ceres can also be accomplished just as easily.”
Sharper new images from Vesta will be published by NASA in the next day or so.
“We did take a few navigation images in this last sequence and when they get through processing they should be put on the web this week,” Russell informed. “These images are from a similar angle to the last set and with somewhat better resolution and will not reveal much new.”
However, since Dawn is now orbiting Vesta our upcoming view of the protoplanet will be quite different from what we’ve seen in the approach images thus far.
“We will be changing views in the future as the spacecraft begins to climb into its science orbit,” stated Russell.
“This may reveal new features on the surface as well as giving us better resolution. So stay tuned.”
Marc Rayman explained how and why Dawn’s trajectory is changing from equatorial to polar:
“Now that we are close enough to Vesta for its gravity to cause a significant curvature in the trajectory, our view is beginning to change,” said Rayman. “That will be evident in the pictures taken now and in the near future, as the spacecraft arcs north over the dark side and then orbits back to the south over the illuminated side.”
“The sun is over the southern hemisphere right now,” added Russell. “When we leave we are hoping to see it shine in the north.”
Dawn is an international mission with significant participation from Germany and Italy. The navigation images were taken by Dawn’s framing cameras which were built in Germany.
Exploring Vesta is like studying a fossil from the distant past that will immeasurably increase our knowledge of the beginnings of our solar system and how it evolved over time.
Dawn Infographic Poster - click to enlarge. Credit: NASA
Vesta suffered a cosmic collision at the south pole in the distant past that Dawn can now study at close range.
“For now we are viewing a fantastic asteroid, seeing it up close as we zero in on its southern hemisphere, looking at the huge central peak, and wondering how it got there,” explained Jim Green
“We know Vesta was nearly spherical at one time. Then a collision in its southern hemisphere occurred blowing off an enormous amount of material where a central peak now remains.”
That intriguing peak is now obvious in the latest Dawn images from Vesta. But what does it mean and reveal ?
“We wonder what is that peak? replied Green. “Is it part of the core exposed?
“Was it formed as a result of the impact or did it arise from volcanic action?”
“The Dawn team hopes to answer these questions. I can’t wait!” Green told me.
As a result of that ancient south pole collision, about 5% of all the meteorites found on Earth actually originate from Vesta.
Keep your eyes glued to Dawn as mysterious Vesta’s alluring secrets are unveiled.
Dawn Trajectory and Current Location in orbit at Vesta on July 18, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL
