NASA to Unveil Full-Frame Image of Vesta at News Conference

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Jul 27, 2011, 11:00 ET

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a news conference on Monday, Aug. 1, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss the Dawn spacecraft's successful orbit insertion around Vesta on July 15 and unveil the first full-frame images from Dawn's framing camera. The news conference will be held in the Von Karman auditorium at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, Calif. Journalists also may ask questions from participating NASA locations or join by phone. To obtain dial-in information, journalists must contact JPL's Media Relations Office at 818-354-5011 by 9 a.m. PDT on Aug. 1.

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NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the event. It also will be carried live on Ustream, with a live chat box available, at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

The news conference panelists are:

-- Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Charles Elachi, director, JPL

-- Marc Rayman, chief engineer and mission manager, JPL

-- Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator, University of California, Los Angeles

-- Holger Sierks, framing camera team member, Max Planck Society, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany

-- Enrico Flamini, chief scientist, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Rome, Italy

Although Dawn is collecting some science data now, the mission's intensive collection of information will begin in early August. Observations of the giant asteroid Vesta will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. After spending one year orbiting Vesta, Dawn will travel to a second destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, and arrive there in February 2015.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

SOURCE NASA