Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday
on Twitter Many types of craters are captured in this panorama
of recent Dawn images. Credit: NASA There’s a new citizen
science project in town, and this one will allow you to be among
the first to see high-resolution, stunning images of Vesta from
the Dawn mission. Called AsteroidMappers, the project asks the
public to help the Dawn mission scientists to identify craters,
boulders and other features on Vesta’s surface. “If you’ve
already been addicted to MoonMappers, you’ll be even more
addicted to AsteroidMappers!”said Nicole Gugliucci from
CosmoQuest, home to several citizen science projects. As you
know, Dawn has been in orbit of the asteroid Vesta, but just
recently left orbit and is now on its way to Ceres. This is a
first in space exploration, where a spacecraft orbits one body
and then leaves to go on to another. This can only be
accomplished because of Dawn’s revolutionary ion engine. The
goal of the Dawn mission is to characterize the