Vesta's Blotches

NASA's Dawn spacecraft continues imaging and mapping the surface of the large asteroid, Vesta. New images show both dark and extremely bright patches scattered across the surface. Early on, astronomers are interpreting the bright patches as areas where the original surface of Vesta has been revealed while the dark spots may constitute scars from low velocity collisions-- bumps-- with other bodies.

There's some chance that Dawn ends up being among the first of a generation of missions that will transform and deepen our understanding of the small bodies of the Solar System. Given the budget problems of governments, and therefore of government space agencies, for the next many years, less costly missions will be funded over more costly, more complex missions to planets. The calculus might be that low budget efforts can produce more science bang for the buck exploring asteroids and moons than they could looking at a particular aspect of a complex planet. So, budget shortfalls on Earth may lead to a golden age of exploration in the Main Belt of asteroids that could lay the basic factual foundation for an eventual human move into the Solar System, creating an extraordinarily rich and diverse human economy.