UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGIN OF THE ASTEROIDS THROUGH THE STUDY OF VESTA AND CERES: THE ROLE OF DAWN - Advances in Geosciences - page 287

UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGIN OF THE
ASTEROIDS THROUGH THE STUDY OF VESTA
AND CERES: THE ROLE OF DAWN
ALBERTO CELLINO ∗,∗∗ , FABRIZIO CAPACCIONI †,†† ,
MARIA TERESA CAPRIA †,‡‡ , ANGIOLETTA CORADINI †,§§ ,
MARIA CRISTINA DE SANCTIS †,¶¶ , HORST U. KELLER ‡, ,
THOMAS H. PRETTYMAN §,∗∗∗ , CAROL A. RAYMOND ¶,†††
and CHRISTOPHER T. RUSSELL ,‡‡‡
∗ INAF — Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino
Strada Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese, Italy
† INAF — IASF, via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
‡ Max Planck Institute for Aeronomie, Germany
§ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
¶ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, USA
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
∗∗ [e-mail]
†† [e-mail]
‡‡ [e-mail]
§§ [e-mail]
¶¶ [e-mail]
[e-mail]
∗∗∗ [e-mail]
††† [e-mail]
‡‡‡ [e-mail]
The Dawn mission is aimed at providing a wealth of fundamental informa-
tion concerning the two giant asteroids (1) Ceres and (4) Vesta. According
to current ground-based data, these two objects are thought to be radically
different, and offer a nice example of the huge variety of physical properties
characterizing the main belt asteroid population. In particular, (1) Ceres, the
largest main belt asteroid, is thought to be a mostly primitive object, whereas
(4) Vesta is the best example of a fully differentiated asteroid. A major goal
of modern planetary science is to understand how and why these two objects,
which are orbiting at fairly similar heliocentric distances, can be so different.
In turn, this question is related to our understanding of the early phases in
Solar Systems history, when planetary growth took place in the protoplan-
etary disk. In situ exploration of Ceres and Vesta by Dawn is expected to
provide new fundamental data, and to possibly open new paths to theoretical
investigations.
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