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the purpose of the dawn mission is to

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understand what was happening in the

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opening chapter of our solar system's

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history to do that we are going to

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explore the two most massive objects in

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the asteroid belt Vesta and Ceres which

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are time capsules from that early

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chapter Don is going to arrive at Vesta

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in july 2011 go into orbit around it and

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map its surface even with images from

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the Hubble Space Telescope and

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ground-based telescopes scientists have

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only a fuzzy view of what Vesta looks

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like we won't really know what the

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surface of Vesta looks like until Don

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gets there this video shows one of the

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best guesses so far about the lumpy

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shape of Vesta it also shows the type of

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craters that we might expect to find

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based on what we see on earth moon

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another version of the Vesta surface was

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constructed using a different technique

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as seen in this series of still images

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these two versions of Vesta surface came

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from an exercise that the dawn team

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conducted to practice mapping the

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topography of Vesta the exercise helped

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on science planners tweak the imaging

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plans to improve the resolution of the

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topographic maps we will make when we

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get to vesta the virtual vesta

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simulation has been fun and helpful but

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we can't wait to see what the real vesta

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looks like stay tuned for Dawn's