After a nearly four-year journey, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has entered the orbit around the asteroid Vesta early on Saturday morning, the first mission that has entered the orbit around a main-belt asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012.
Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions.
