<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><head></head><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">* <b>Dawn</b> - May 10, 2012</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>NASA Dawn Mission Reveals Secrets of Large Asteroid</b></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b></b></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">"PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth's moon.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Vesta now has been revealed as a special fossil of the early solar system with a more varied, diverse surface than originally thought. Scientists have confirmed a variety of ways in which Vesta more closely resembles a small planet or Earth's moon than another asteroid. Results appear in today's edition of the journal Science.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">"Dawn's visit to Vesta has confirmed our broad theories of this giant asteroid's history, while helping to fill in details it would have been impossible to know from afar," said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Dawn's residence at Vesta of nearly a year has made the asteroid's planet-like qualities obvious and shown us our connection to that bright orb in our night sky."</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Scientists now see Vesta as a layered, planetary building block with an iron core - the only one known to survive the earliest days of the solar system. The asteroid's geologic complexity can be attributed to a process that separated the asteroid into a crust, mantle and iron core with a radius of approximately 68 miles (110 kilometers) about 4.56 billion years ago. The terrestrial planets and Earth's moon formed in a similar way."</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; color: rgb(31, 0, 172); "><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=65362&media_id=143122771">Dawn's Virtual Flight over Vesta<span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1f00ac"></span></a></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; color: rgb(31, 0, 172); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000">A gallery of images can be found online at: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/gallery-index.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px">http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/gallery-index.html</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">For more information on the Dawn mission, visit the Dawn home page: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html"><span style="font: 12.0px Courier; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #3300ff">http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Courier; "><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"></span></div></body></html>