Yesterday NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at Vesta, Vesta is a 330 mile wide asteroid.  This is the first time a spacecraft has oribited on a large asteroid, it is known as proto planet, in the solar systems asteroid belt.
While the spacecraft orbits the rock, the robotic spacecraft will be conducting a year long study of the Asteroid.  The spacecaft will be putting together data as  it collects  it and will be  taking pictures on a ultra-high resolution framing camera, a visual and infrared spectrometer, as well as a gamma ray and neutron detector. According to Space.com, for its next destination in this two-asteroid tour, next year Dawn will fire its ion engines to send the craft toward Ceres, a larger spherical asteroid that’s also referred to as a dwarf planet. The spacecraft is scheduled to reach that destination by 2015.
