Asteroid Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending an 11-year-old historic mission to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, the US space agency said.

A pair of bright spots that glimmer inside an impact crater on the asteroid Ceres could be some kind of icy plume, new images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft have revealed.

The spacecraft made a 14-month tour of the asteroid Vesta before steering itself toward Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

"These results, and many others from the Dawn mission, show that Vesta is home to many processes that were previously thought to be exclusive to planets."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft was captured into orbit around the massive asteroid Vesta after a 1.7 billion-mile (2.7 billion kilometer) journey and is preparing to begin a study of a surface that may date to the earliest era of the solar system, the space agency said on Monday.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending an 11-year-old historic mission to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, the US space agency said.

A pair of bright spots that glimmer inside an impact crater on the asteroid Ceres could be some kind of icy plume, new images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft have revealed.

The spacecraft made a 14-month tour of the asteroid Vesta before steering itself toward Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

"These results, and many others from the Dawn mission, show that Vesta is home to many processes that were previously thought to be exclusive to planets."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft was captured into orbit around the massive asteroid Vesta after a 1.7 billion-mile (2.7 billion kilometer) journey and is preparing to begin a study of a surface that may date to the earliest era of the solar system, the space agency said on Monday.