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Asteroid Vesta – NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft is Now Orbiting the Huge Asteroid

After four years of traveling through the solar system, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is now circling around Vesta, a huge asteroid the size of Arizona and the second largest object in the main asteroid belt.

The historic event took place Friday night at around 10:00 p.m., NASA officials said.

The arrival at Vesta is only one stop in the long road for the Dawn spacecraft.

The spacecraft, which has logged about 1.7 billion miles (2.7 billion kilometers) since 2007, is also set to study the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

The $466 million mission is aimed at comparing Vesta and Ceres to help scientists learn about the early days of the solar system and the processes that formed and shaped rocky planets like Earth and Mars.

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