The Majestic Universe - NASAs Dawn Mission

Never miss an episode! Download A Beautiful World Podcast: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a-bea…id986469943?mt=2 Heather McElhatton interviews the lead engineer of NASAs Dawn space probe, which is set to make discoveries on Ceres and Vesta, which are are the two most massive residents of the asteroid belt. Vesta is a rocky body, while Ceres is believed to contain large quantities of ice. The profound differences in geology between these two protoplanets that formed and evolved so close to each other form a bridge from the rocky bodies of the inner solar system to the icy bodies, all of which lay beyond in the outer solar system. At present, most of what we now know about Vesta and Ceres comes from ground-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes like NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The telescopes pick up sunlight reflected from the surface in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared, and by emitted radiation in the far-infrared and microwave regions. "A Beautiful World" is a news program produced by American Public Media that focuses on inspirational stories from around the world, featuring good news about science, technology, ecology, art, music and medicine. The program is hosted by best-selling author Heather McElhatton. Visit www.mpr.org/abeautifulworld for more stories and audio collections.