Skip Navigation

Resources

Huge Troughs on Vesta

Huge Troughs on Vesta
Photojournal: PIA15673
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Published: May 10, 2012

This image from NASA's Dawn mission shows huge grooves on the giant asteroid Vesta that were the result of mega impacts at the south pole.

Related

This diagram shows the trajectory of Cassini's closest Enceladus flybys from the Prime and Equinox missions, relative to the south polar plume, which is shown in false color based on an image taken...
More
Diagram showing the trajectory of Cassini close Enceladus flybys
Cassini's Closest Enceladus Fly-bys from the Prime and Equinox Missions
This detail of NASA's Dawn spacecraft's framing camera image shows low sun angles and large shadows on asteroid Vesta.
More
Night and Day Boundary on Vesta
Night and Day Boundary on Vesta
Dark spokes dance around Saturn's B ring in this series of movies comprised of images taken with Cassini's wide-angle camera. This animation is a concatenation of spoke movies acquired by NASA¹s C...
More
Dark spokes dance around Saturn's B ring
'Tis the Season for Spokes
Like a giant eye for the giant planet, Saturn's great vortex at its north pole appears to stare back at Cassini as Cassini stares at it.
More
The great vortex at Saturn's north pole
The Eye of Saturn
This animated sequence of images, captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows changes in the brightness of the Enceladus plume during a 6.5-hour observation.
More
Enceladus' plume
Changing View of the Enceladus Plume
NASA's Dawn mission has found that craters on Ceres show a diversity of shapes that provide important clues about the structure of Ceres' subsurface; shown here is Fejokoo, a polygonal crater.
More
Fejokoo Crater
Fejokoo Crater
Saturn's south pole, seen here by the Cassini spacecraft, is in twilight as Saturn nears equinox (August 2009). Soon, the pole will enter its 15-year-long night. This mosaic consists of four image...
More
Saturn's south pole
Encroaching Darkness
NASA's InSight spacecraft, its heat shield and its parachute were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
More
three views of hardware on the surface of mars as seen from above
InSight on Mars, as Seen by HiRISE
ORIGINAL CAPTION: The Cassini spacecraft awaits placement of its payload fairing at Launch Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS) to protect Cassini during launch. 
More
Color image of man standing next to top of spacecraft.
Cassini: Ready for Her Shell
NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn was awarded the 2012 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Current Achievement on March 21 at a black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C. Pictured (from left ...
More
Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian; Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and Gen. Jack Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum.
National Air and Space Museum Award for Cassini-Huygens
Brooding Saturn seems to be missing its rings, but their shadows on the planet betray their presence. The inner rings are in fact contained within this scene, but they are so tenuous as to be near...
More
Saturn
Dusky Saturn
The bright fractures on Dione's trailing side slice across terrain that is darker than the rest of the surface. Cassini scientists are working to understand the nature of the dark material that a...
More
Dione
Bright Lines, Dark Canvas
This image of Jupiter's southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on the outbound leg of a close flyby of the gas-giant planet.
More
colorful bands of clouds on planet
Outbound View of Jupiter
Bright fractures creep across the surface of icy Dione. This extensive canyon system is centered on a region of terrain that is significantly darker than the rest of the moon. Part of the darker te...
More
Dione
Dione's Creeping Canyons
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a surface with many craters and linear chains of small craters that merge into ridges on the giant asteroid Vesta.
More
Unusual Crater Chains and Ridges
Unusual Crater Chains and Ridges
This still image was cut out from a moving image (tele shot) taken by the HDTV onboard the KAGUYA at 12:07 p.m. on November 7, 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST,) then sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Spac...
More
This still image was cut out from a moving image (tele shot) taken by the HDTV onboard the KAGUYA at 12:07 p.m. on November 7, 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST,) then sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center.
Earth-set image shot by the HDTV onboard the KAGUYA
During a distant flyby encounter with Enceladus, Cassini imaged the moon's wrinkled leading hemisphere. At the scale visible here, this region of the surface is generally devoid of impact craters, ...
More
Enceladus close-up
Youthful Wrinkles
This image from the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft shows the radar-bright western margin of Xanadu, one of the most prominent features on Titan (see also Radar Images...
More
This image shows the radar-bright western margin of Xanadu
Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea
Two 2001 images from the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance when haze raised by dust-storm activity in the south became glo...
More
Two 2001 images from the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance when haze raised by dust-storm activity in the south became globally distributed.
Dust Haze Hiding the Martian Surface in 2001
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the crater Numisia, located just south of the equator in the Numisia quadrangle on asteroid Vesta.
More
Bright Material at Numisia Crater
Bright Material at Numisia Crater
This mosaic of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft depicts fan-like structures in Saturn's tenuous F ring. Bright features are also visible near the core of the ring. Such features suggest the ex...
More
This mosaic depicts fan-like structures in Saturn's tenuous F ring.
'Fan' in the F Ring
Like early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. 
More
Illustration of our galaxy with and without labels.
The Milky Way Galaxy
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft is centered on asteroid Vesta's Vibidia crater. There is a distinctive distribution of bright and dark material around Vibidia crater.
More
Vibidia Crater
Vibidia Crater
As Enceladus spews water ice from its south polar region, Cassini also shows Saturn's faint G ring before the moon. See Bursting at the Seams and Ghostly Fingers of Enceladus to learn more about ...
More
Enceladus spews water ice from its south polar region
Enceladus and G Ring
In this sequence of four images taken during one night of observation by NASA's Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, the speck of light that moves relative to the background stars is a small a...
More
In this sequence of four images taken during one night of observation by NASA's Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, the speck of light that moves relative to the background stars is a small asteroid that was, at the time, about as far away as the moon.
Sky Survey Detected This Small Asteroid

You Might Also Like

In commemoration of NASA’s 50th anniversary of the lunar landing and in celebration of September’s National Literacy Month, McDonald’s and Peanuts partnered to create space-themed toys and STEM-focused books.
More
Peanuts Toys and Books Commemorate 50th Anniversary of Apollo
Peanuts Toys and Books Commemorate 50th Anniversary of Apollo
NASA is asking industry to respond to a Request for Proposals to deliver cargo, science experiments and supplies to the Gateway to support Artemis missions to the lunar surface.
More
NASA Asks American Companies to Deliver Supplies for Artemis Moon Missions
NASA Asks American Companies to Deliver Supplies for Artemis Moon Missions
Europa Clipper will explore Jupiter's icy moon in-depth during multiple flybys, studying whether Europa could harbor conditions suitable for life.
More
Europa Clipper's Mission to Jupiter's Icy Moon Confirmed
Europa Clipper's Mission to Jupiter's Icy Moon Confirmed
If our eyes could see high-energy radiation called gamma rays, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! That’s how NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has seen our neighbor in space for the past decade.
More
Moon Glows Brighter Than Sun in Images From NASA's Fermi
Moon Glows Brighter Than Sun in Images From NASA's Fermi
NASA has selected two proposals to demonstrate small satellite technologies to improve science observations in deep space, which could help NASA develop better models to predict space weather events that can affect astronauts and spacecraft.
More
NASA Selects Proposals to Demonstrate SmallSat Technologies to Study Interplanetary Space
NASA Selects Proposals to Demonstrate SmallSat Technologies to Study Interplanetary Space
The bit carousel, which lies at the heart of the rover's Sample Caching System, is now aboard NASA's newest rover.
More
Robotic Toolkit Added to NASA's Mars 2020 Rover
Robotic Toolkit Added to NASA's Mars 2020 Rover