NASA Spacecraft Captures Asteroid Approach (Video)

A video of 20 looped images showing NASA’s Dawn spacecraft approaching the unexplored asteroid Vesta is available for Internet viewing, announced.

The images show a dark feature near Vesta's equator moving from left to right across the field of view as the asteroid rotates, according to a statement from JPL. Images also show Vesta's jagged, irregular shape, suggesting the enormous crater at Vesta's south pole.

Scientists snapped the images with a framing camera during a 30-minute period, the statement reads. The pictures further show about 30 degrees of a rotation. The pixel size in these images is approaching the resolution of the best Hubble Space Telescope images of Vesta, according to JPL.

Before orbiting Vesta on July 16, Dawn will gently slow down to about 75 mph. NASA is expecting to release more images on a weekly basis, with more frequent images available once the spacecraft begins collecting science at Vesta.

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Dawn, including who built what and who manages which part of the mission, you may visit http://www.nasa.gov/dawn.  You can also follow the mission on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .