Wanted: Asteroid Mappers to Help Scientists Delve Through Data from Dawn

Vesta-pan.jpg

Many types of craters are captured in this panorama of recent Dawn images. Credit: NASA

There's a new citizen science project in town, and this one will allow you to be among the first to see high-resolution, stunning images of Vesta from the Dawn mission. Called

AsteroidMappers,

the project asks the public to help the Dawn mission scientists to identify craters, boulders and other features on Vesta's surface. "If you've already been addicted to MoonMappers, you'll be even more addicted to AsteroidMappers!"said Nicole Gugliucci from

CosmoQuest

, home to several citizen science projects.

As you know, Dawn has been in orbit of the asteroid Vesta, but just recently left orbit and is now on its way to Ceres. This is a first in space exploration, where a spacecraft orbits one body and then leaves to go on to another. This can only be accomplished because of Dawn's revolutionary ion engine.

The goal of the Dawn mission is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formations. Ceres and Vesta both reside in the asteroid belt, but yet each has followed a very different evolutionary path constrained by the diversity of processes that operated during the first few million years of solar system evolution.

Even the Dawn scientists have been amazed at what they've seen at Vesta.

"We have acquired so much more data than we had planned even in late 2011," Dr. Marc Rayman, the mission's Chief Engineer, told Universe Today

in a previous article.

"We have conducted a tremendous exploration of Vesta – the second most massive body between Mars and Jupiter, a giant of the main asteroid belt."

With

AsteroidMappers (Vesta Edition)

, you'll be helping the Dawn scientists learn more – not only about Vesta, but about how our solar system evolved.

As with every CosmoQuest project, there is a tutorial to help you get started. But the work area is fairly intuitive, with instructions and hints along the way.

The Dawn scientists have not yet released to the public all the images, so by working on this citizen science project, you'll be looking at pristine images that perhaps no one else has seen before. The images are absolutely beautiful, as Vesta has turned out to be even more fascinating than expected, with huge impact basins, steep cliffs and unusual features on its surface.

"Vesta is unlike any other object we've visited in the solar system," said Dawn mission team member Vishnu Reddy. "We see a wide range of variation on the surface, with some areas bright as snow, and other areas as dark as coal."

Scientists have said that Vesta more closely resembles a small planet or Earth's Moon than another asteroid, and they now have a better understanding of both Vesta's surface and interior, and can conclusively link Vesta with meteorites that have fallen on Earth.

So, check out

AsteroidMappers

and enjoy the views! As

@therealjason

said on Twitter, "I don't map Vesta very often, but when I do, I choose @cosmoquestX - Stay curious, my friends."

Learn more about the Dawn mission here.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com