Its exceptionally close pass of bright Venus (2.6 million miles, or 4.2 million km) happened on December 17-18. In this starry panorama Bottom line: Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) discovered on January 3, 2021 is heading inward toward its January 3, 2022, perihelion. Therefore, Webb requested just enough energy from the Ariane rocket to ensure that we would never have to do a retro burn, but would always require a burn from the observatory to precisely make up the difference and place it in the desired orbit. This visualization tracks the trajectory of the Voyager 2 spacecraft through the solar system. It rises with Mars around 4 a.m. and is visible low in the southeast until sunrise. If so, you may very well have seen part of the asteroid, Vesta! The big news for Webb this week was the final insertion into orbit around the second Lagrange point. This animation shows the last 30 seconds of Cassini's X- and S-band radio signals as they disappeared from mission control on Sept. 15, 2017. By Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, And Alexandra Lockwood, project scientist for Webb science communications, Space Telescope Science Institute. May and November The dashboard displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon); an object larger than about 150 meters that can approach the Earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object. NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with three astronauts and a cosmonaut on Thursday, March 2, 2023. Sound waves from the nascent universe, called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs), left their imprint on the cosmos by influencing galaxy distribution. Karen Richon, Webbs Flight Dynamics lead engineer, describes getting Webb to L2 and keeping it there: Think about throwing a ball straight up in the air, as hard as you can; it starts out very fast, but slows down as gravity pulls it back towards Earth, eventually stopping at its peak and then returning to the ground. Your email address will only be used for EarthSky content. Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) operates in a geosynchronous orbit around Earth to obtain a continuous view of the Sun. An update on findings from Cassini's latest flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Editors Note: This post was updated to clarify the strength vs. stiffness of beryllium. What's Up for January? Donald Richardson passed away on January 28, 2022, in his sleep, at home in Indianapolis. Embed this resource by pasting the following code into your website: Managing Editor: $('.webgl_module_container').toggleClass('full') Next up in the wavefront process, we will be moving mirrors in the micron and nanometer ranges to reach the final optical positions for an aligned telescope. Onboard were NASA's Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates' Sultan Alneyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born. Cassini mission planners created this animation to showcase Cassini's final 22 orbits - the mission's Grand Finale. "It was a great call and a good learning opportunity for the crew and I think for the teams.". its final destination, a million miles from Earth, last month. Then five months of commissioning will include 1) further cooling of the entire observatory, and of the Mid-Infrared Instrument in particular, 2) checking and then aligning the secondary and 18 mirror segments into a single coherent optical system, first with the NIRCam instrument and then with all instruments individually and in parallel, and 3) calibrating of each of the four instruments and their many scientific modes. The process will essentially create an image of 18 random, blurry points of light. The team also commanded actuators that guide Webbs fine steering mirror to make minor movements, confirming they are working as expected. The team is committed to keeping you informed even through the often slow and meticulous parts of this commissioning process. Today, at 1:17 p.m. EST, NASAs James Webb Space Telescope completed all of its large-scale deployments with the extension and latching of its starboard primary mirror wing. setTimeout(function(){ fullHeightWidthIframe() Im not ready to put the book on the shelf, Thanks to the Webb team for everything you have done and continue to do., Bill Ochs, Webb project manager, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. The process of telescope alignment will take approximately three months., Erin Wolf, James Webb Space Telescope Program Manager, Ball Aerospace. Soar over the giant asteroid Vesta in 3-D. Going fast! Unlike the ball, Webb wouldnt return to the Earths surface, but would be in an extremely elliptical orbit, with a perigee altitude of 300 kilometers and an apogee altitude of 1,300,000 kilometers. The animation archived on this page shows the geocentric phase, libration, position angle of the axis, and apparent diameter of the Moon throughout the year 2017, at hourly intervals. Getting there is going to take some patience: The computer-controlled mirror actuators are designed for extremely small motions measured in nanometers. With Artemis, we will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon and establish long-term lunar exploration in preparation for human missions to Mars. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency)and theCanadian Space Agency. With about two minutes left on the . Webb would have to do a significant braking maneuver by thrusting toward the Sun to slow down. Watch live as NASA and SpaceX target 12:34 a.m. EST Thursday, March 2, for the launch of the Crew-6 mission from Florida's Kennedy Space Center with a team of three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut. February is a perfect time to enjoy one of the most popular and well-studied sights in the night sky: the Great Nebula in Orion. So enjoy the crescent Venus that is the planet at its brightest. If you want to find the one the Hubble Space Telescope took on your birthday, heres how you do it. He has also offered dozens of conferences related to asteroids and comets at the Arecibo Observatory. CNN . Stay up to date with all of NASA's missions to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov. Poet Laureate Ada Limn is crafting a new poem dedicated to NASAs Europa Clipper mission. } Before launch, the mirrors were all positioned with the pegs held snug in the sockets, providing extra support. What's Up for January? Use this tool to see the current Moon phase and to plan ahead for other Moon views. The instruments are cooling, too, in a gradual and carefully controlled manner, and Webb is also continuing to gently coast outwards toward L2. & Michigan Tech. In the meantime, there are several smaller deployments in the next couple of weeks, which constitute the beginning of a several-month phase of aligning the telescopes optics. } With major deployments complete, Webb continues its journey to its final halo orbit around L2. // console.log("received message", event) The mirror deployment team incrementally moved all 132 actuators located on the back of the primary mirror segments and secondary mirror. BREVARD, Fla. An international crew of three astronauts and a cosmonaut launched from Kennedy Space Center early Thursday, kicking off a roughly six-month science mission to the International Space Station. Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday. NASA projects that the. Comet Leonard will round the sun at perihelion on January 3, 2022, at a distance of about 56 million miles (0.6 AU, or 90 million km). size is indicated for each stripe. Each mirror now needs to be deployed out by 12.5 millimeters (about half an inch) to get the pegs clear from the sockets. Of all the unusual and different ways you could mark your birthday, finding out what was going on in space while you were celebrating down on Earth has to rank pretty highly. We know what the Red Planet looks like from the outside but what's going on under the surface of Mars? So Comet Leonard is the best comet weve had this year. But for now, it is the perfect target to begin our search for photons, a search that will lead us to the distant universe. Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiters upper atmosphere where its signature colorful striped clouds form. }, 300) $('.webgl_module_container iframe').css({'height': "", 'width': '1px', 'max-width': '100%', 'min-width': '100%'}) Phil Davis While all Lagrange points are gravitational balance points, not all are completely stable. Poet Laureate Ada Limn Will Ride to Europa on NASA Spacecraft, NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of Science, 40-Year Study Finds Mysterious Patterns in Temperatures at Jupiter, Juno Explores Jovian Moons During Extended Mission. Asteroid 33012EddieIrizarry, a 7.8 km space rock, has been named in his honor. Mag 2.6!? The smallest is Its been much-anticipated, and its turning out to be quite a fine object for viewing! New year, new Moon; midnight meteors; and Mars rises. Note that it is simpler, easier, and more efficient to orbit around L2 than to dwell precisely at L2. Searching for January 4 on the NASA Hubble birthday site reveals an incredible image of Saturn taken in infrared by Hubble in 1998, which would have been Newton's 355th birthday. When NASAs Perseverance rover travels to Mars to search for signs of life, its important that the spacecraft doesnt bring along any Earth bacteria. setTimeout(function(){ & Michigan Tech. streching about 60 degrees across deep southern skies What's Up for February? The James Webb Space Telescope is the worlds largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. In the center of this line of stars is one that looks kind of fuzzy. NASA's Dawn mission will be the first to explore a dwarf planet on March 6, 2015. Its about the same speed at which grass grows! } else { Mathematically, Lagrange points are solutions to what is called the restricted three-body problem. Any two massive, gravitationally significant objects in space generate five specific locations Lagrange points where their gravitational forces and the centrifugal force of the motion of a small, third body such as a spacecraft are in equilibrium. They are a testament to the hard work and expertise of the international Webb team. Something went wrong while submitting the form. When NIRCam reaches 120 kelvins (approximately -244 degrees Fahrenheit, or -153 degrees Celsius), Webbs optics team will be ready to begin meticulously moving the 18 primary mirror segments to form a single mirror surface. I am so filled with pride for our team. Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com. Across the top of the frame are the stars and nebulae along the plane (But they can appear anywhere in the sky!) The dashboard displays the date of closest approach, approximate object diameter, relative size and distance from Earth for each encounter. But rest assured that this summer will sizzle with the hot (nay cold?) $full.find('iframe').css({'height': h, 'width': w, 'min-width': '', 'max-width': ''}) Webb has used as little propellant as possible for course corrections while it travels out to the realm of L2, to leave as much remaining propellant as possible for Webbs ordinary operations over its lifetime: station-keeping (small adjustments to keep Webb in its desired orbit) and momentum unloading (to counteract the effects of solar radiation pressure on the huge sunshield). That event, called solar conjunction, took place back in October. The cutting-edge process means rockets can be built in weeks instead of months or years and uses fewer parts. You can find out what image of space Nasa took on your birthday at the Nasa website, with a section dedicated to the Hubbles photos. Youd do it by taking a close look at the comets position relative to background stars. Phil Davis After two weeks of complex structural deployments, Webb has passed a major milestone and is now fully unfolded in space. Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is NASA's spacecraft on Mars are all affected by the winds, which can produce a tiny dust devil or a global dust storm. In what will be SpaceX's third flight of 2022, the company is set to loft 49 Starlink satellites into space on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in. Dr. Nicola Fox will serve as the associate administrator for the agencys Science Mission Directorate. The average distance between Earth and the moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers). $full.find('iframe').css({'height': h, 'width': w, 'min-width': '', 'max-width': ''}) 3 - Charon, NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Flight Over Occator Crater, Venus' Squishy' Outer Shell May Be Resurfacing the Planet, NASA Administrator Selects New Head of Science, Poem by U.S. They will spend six months on the International Space Station. Following Webb's arrival at its orbital destination around Lagrange Point 2 (L2) on Jan. 24, the mission operations team began working its way through a critical series of steps: powering on all the science instruments, turning off heaters to begin a long cooldown process, and ultimately capturing the first photons on Webb's primary camera to enable a months-long alignment of the telescope. An amazing feature of this celestial visitor is that its an ultrafast comet. Photos and charts here. Then share the results with your friends on social media using #Hubble30. Published: December 30, 2021. at the center of all the southern star trail arcs. Big water news from Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus. Congratulations to the team for all of their hard work ensuring Webbs safe arrival at L2 today. This telescope will let astronomers peer further back in time than ever before all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7 billion years ago as well as scanning the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of extra-terrestrial life. } else { After revealing a trove of details about the moons Ganymede and Europa, the mission to Jupiter is setting its sights on sister moon Io. The primary mirror segments were driven 12.5 millimeters away from the telescope structure. We are now ready to align mirrors and commission instruments and have already proven that all the hardware associated with the optics (including 132 actuators) is working beautifully. During the past month, JWST has achieved amazing success and is a tribute to all the folks who spent many years and even decades to ensure mission success, said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA Official: Phillip Newman The geocentric phase, libration, position angle of the axis, and apparent diameter of the Moon throughout the year 2020. That deployment is still expected to take place over at least two days. if($full.length > 0){ A detailed breakdown of Webbs orbit can be found here. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says. function fullHeightWidthIframe(){ in May. Credit: NASA. With the departure of Saturn and Venus over the past two months, Jupiter is the only bright planet left in our twilight skies in February, and it's on its way out! Simply enter your month and date of birth when prompted, and it will bring up whatever image was taken that day. NASA by Caltech. Comets are typically brightest around perihelion, and the . Poet Laureate Ada Limn is crafting a new poem dedicated to NASAs Europa Clipper mission. By that we mean that this comet takes tens of thousands of years to complete an orbit around the sun. Comet Leonard will round the sun at perihelion on January 3, 2022, at a distance of about 56 million miles (0.6 AU, or 90 million km). At Sun-Earth L2, the Sun and Earth (and Moon, too) are always on one side of space, allowing Webb to keep its telescope optics and instruments perpetually shaded. The fact that it looked simple is a tribute to all those over the years who have worked towards Webb mission success. Eleven years in the life of the Sun, spanning most of solar cycle 23. Experience the Web Around Asteroid Bennu in this interactive, 360 video, optimized for mobile devices and desktop browsers. Webb mission management decided this morning to pause deployment activities for today and allow the team to rest and prepare to begin Webbs sunshield tensioning tomorrow, Sunday, Jan. 2. distance from Kolkata, India, planet Earth. fullHeightWidthIframe() NASA / Using six motors that deploy each segment approximately half the length of a paper clip, these actuators clear the mirrors from their launch restraints and give each segment enough space to later be adjusted in other directions to the optical starting position for the upcoming wavefront alignment process. Watch a special episode of NASA Science Live at 3 p.m. EST today to learn more about whats next for the James Webb Space Telescope. New reports on December 20 also indicate its tail is slightly bigger. That's what's up this week @NASA . That's the nebula. The six Apollo landing sites are revealed chronologically as the phase and libration of the Moon is shown throughout the Apollo era. Ground teams have now begun instructing the primary mirror segments and secondary mirror to move from their stowed-for-launch configuration, off of snubbers that kept them snug and safe from rattling from vibration. APOD: 2022 January 1 - The Full Moon of 2021 Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! $('body').css('overflow','') A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. This will give the mirrors room to roam and let them be readied in their starting positions for alignment. You can find out what image of space Nasa took on your birthday at the Nasa website, with a section dedicated to the Hubble's photos. The APOD, also known as Astronomy Picture of the Day Calendar is a website provided by NASA and Michigan Technological University and was launched in 1995. NationalAeronautics and SpaceAdministration, Webb Sunshield Tensioning To Begin Tomorrow, Webb Observes a Globular Cluster Sparkling with Separate Stars, Breaking the Tracking Speed Limit With Webb, Webb Spies Chariklo Ring System With High-Precision Technique, Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph Operations Update. For the first few weeks of mirror alignment, the team will keep the instrument trained on the star while they make microscopic adjustments to the mirror segments; ultimately that collection of 18 blurry dots will become a focused image of a single star. And because L2 is a location of gravitational equilibrium, it is easy for Webb to maintain an orbit there. Having left the evening skies last month, Venus is now rising before the Sun as the "Morning Star." This enables them to get cold for infrared sensitivity, yet still access nearly half the sky at any given moment for observations. At 110 feet in height, Terran 1 is about half the height of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V. But Relativity says the rocket is mostly 3D printed 85% by mass. To view any and every point in the sky over the course of time requires merely waiting a few months to travel farther around the Sun and reveal more of the sky that was previously behind the Sun. The largest Full Moon is ASD at }) Design & Development: Thank you! 3 - Charon, Through the Eyes of Scientists - Meet Thomas Valdez, Venus' Squishy' Outer Shell May Be Resurfacing the Planet, NASA Administrator Selects New Head of Science, Poem by U.S. What's Up for January? NASA and SpaceX previously tried to launch Crew-6 on Monday, Feb. 27, but an issue with the system that ignites the Falcon 9 rocket's Merlin main engines forced teams to stand down and troubleshoot. It's visible to the unaided eye under relatively dark skies, and is easily seen with binoculars as a faint haze. center, with the dark expanse of the Coalsack nebula tucked under the The best way would be with a small telescope. We are now on the verge of aligning the mirrors, instrument activation and commissioning, and the start of wondrous and astonishing discoveries.. The Ka-band and the High-Gain Antenna will eventually allow the observatory to send all of the science images and data down to the ground for astronomers around the world to analyze and make discoveries. For more on these and other stories, follow us on the web at nasa.gov/twan. A stunning image . ET, a Falcon 9 rocket vaulted off pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center with NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission, the seventh flight under contract between the agency and California-based company. Other space-based observatories including WMAP, Herschel, and Planck orbit Sun-Earth L2 for the same reasons. This week, we have started the process of moving the mirror segments (all primary plus secondary) out of their stowed launch positions. flanked by bright galaxies and southern celestial gems. setTimeout(function(){ The Ka-band provides a much higher data rate than the S-band that Webb has been using for communications up until now. (@Space_HRH) December 30, 2021. Discover the cosmos! Now that the telescope is structurally fully deployed with the secondary mirror tripod and both primary mirror wings in place the three-month process of aligning all of Webbs telescope optics into a precise system can now commence. This animation, from Cassini's navigation team, shows the spacecraft's final orbits in 2016 and 2017. featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. SpaceX launches NASA's Crew-6 mission from Kennedy Space Center. Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) As we look back on Webbs first month in space, we asked Bill Ochs, Webb project manager, to share with us his thoughts on the mission so far: It has been about a month since launch, and it has been an unbelievable ride. U.S. Today, we hear from Erin Wolf, Webb program manager at Ball Aerospace, about the completion of that process: Today, the James Webb Space Telescope team completed the mirror segment deployments. For more details, here is Marshall Perrin from the Space Telescope Science Institute, home of the Webb Mission Operations Center: To support the movable mirrors during the ride to space, each of them has on its back three rigid metal pegs which can nestle into matching holder sockets in the telescope structure. ASD at Explanation: This is the last of the major deployments on the observatory, and its completion will set the stage for the remaining five and a half months of commissioning, which consist of settling into stable operating temperature, aligning the mirrors, and calibrating the science instruments. Solar heating and stored energy in the Earth's surface and atmosphere are near their lowest during winter, making the winter season the coldest of the year. Venus is the brightest of all the planets in our solar system because of the highly reflective clouds that completely cover its globe. In fact, NASA stops communicating with our spacecraft at Mars for about 2 weeks every two years, when the planet is directly opposite the Sun. That is the first star Webb will point at to gather engineering data to start the mirror alignment process. observations we will soon be sharing! Privacy Policy and Important Notices And look for Venus to form a trio with the Moon and Mars on the morning of February 26th. Despite its high speed, youll find that its distance from Earth and the vast distances in our solar system will cause the comet to appear as a very slow-moving object. The object's name is displayed by hovering over its encounter date. This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on Jan. 6, 2019, was created by combining two images taken by the NavCam 1 imager aboard NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. And courtesy of Nasa you can see just what was occurring elsewhere in the universe thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been snapping amazing pictures of the galaxies and skies around us since 1990. function toggleFullscreenMessage(){ And although were not hearing reports of people viewing the comet with the unaided eye Comet Leonard is still a good binocular comet. The mission operations teams next major step is to turn off instrument heaters. The Seven Sisters meet the evening star, Mars continues its getaway, and unpacking the Moon illusion. $(window).resize(function(){ Don was a career English professor, a published author, a devoted family man, a duplicate bridge life master, and a resolute Vikings fan, with a quick wit, always a kind word, and a deep and abiding faith. This tends to be one of the better meteor showers of the year, and often produces a number of bright meteors called fireballs. The team also turned on the High-Gain Antenna, enabling downlink to Earth through the Deep Space Network using the Ka radio band. He was 89-1/2 years old. Bill Dunford But its brightness in our skies varies, depending on how far it is from Earth and on its phase. #CometLeonard pic.twitter.com/ocU42M65wC, Space Physics ?? near a perigee or closest approach is easy to spot in star trail images of the southern sky. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin. And, as recent activity shows, theres always the possibility of brightness outbursts as Comet Leonard draws nearer and nearer the sun. Moore Boeck. JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for Monday, January 10, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson ( https://buff.ly/3r0unsJ) Europa and the Great Red Spot. Mars will continue to brighten and climb higher over the next few months, where it'll have super-close conjunctions with Saturn and Jupiter, which we'll tell you about in future videos, so stay tuned! but where exactly is it? Look for the Summer Triangle, keep tabs on the morning planets and June 20 brings the solstice. https://t.co/d4sX1SDdYZ, C/2021 A1 (Comet Leonard) (@Comet2021a1) December 15, 2021. 10:42 a.m. Furthermore, by orbiting rather than being exactly at L2, Webb will never have the Sun eclipsed by Earth, which is necessary for Webbs thermal stability and for power generation. Utilizing thrust every three weeks or so from small rocket engines aboard Webb will keep it orbiting L2, looping around it in a halo orbit once every six months. Like planets, comets do move in front of the star background. . What's Up for February? Comets are typically brightest around perihelion, and the comet has been brightening and is still getting brighter. From engineers to scientists to IT staff to graphic designers to administrative personnel (and more! The Webb mission operations team has given the go-ahead to move forward with the extension of its starboard primary mirror panel. The giant planet stands alone, low in the western sky after sunset in February. Now that Webbs primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have been deployed from their launch positions, engineers will begin the sophisticated three-month process of aligning the telescopes optics to nearly nanometer precision. Relativity prints its rockets and engines in California before shipping them via truck to the Cape. if(event.data == "toggle_fullscreen"){ The Sun as seen in multiple wavelengths of light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory over four days in August 2018. Current Moon Phase Last week, the Webb team began moving the observatorys individual mirror segments out of their launch positions. Thomas Valdez tells how his early penchant for tinkering with things followed a path that led him to a career as a research engineer. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly. GSFC Bob King pointed out at Skyandtelescope.com, See more Comet Leonard photos at EarthSky Community Photos. Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) 2021s best and brightest comet is now in the evening sky for Northern Hemisphere observers. Follow her onTwitter at @AlteredJamie. }, 300) The cryocooler will cool MIRI to 6 kelvins in the following months. This image taken by the Mastcam-Z camera aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover on Jan. 20, 2022, shows that the rover successfully expelled the remaining large fragments of cored rock from a sample tube held in the drill at the end of its robotic arm. Webbs orbit will allow it a wide view of the cosmos at any given moment, as well as the opportunity for its telescope optics and scientific instruments to get cold enough to function and perform optimal science. It will make its closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, on Jan. 12, and will then whip past Earth. Firefox users: To easily share your birthday image on social media, you might . Now that the action-packed deployment sequence is over, we are moving into a much slower, yet deliberate, phase of the commissioning process. So catch Jupiter before it's gone. The two will be only about 4 degrees apart, which should make them appear together through most binoculars. You'd have to go back four years, to March of 2018, to find twilight skies with no bright planets. Jupiter makes its exit, Venus at peak brightness, and the star-forming cloud next door. the most distant Full Moon in December. 2022 January 22: The Full Moon and the Dancer 2022 January 21: Young Star Jet MHO 2147 2022 January 20: NGC 7822 in Cepheus 2022 January 19: M31: The Andromeda Galaxy 2022 January 18: From Orion to the Southern Cross 2022 January 17: Chamaeleon Dark Nebulas 2022 January 16: A Retreating Thunderstorm at Sunset 2022 January 15: Galileo's Europa Put on your 3-D glasses for this ride over asteroid Vesta.
