Education and outreach activities in the context of the dawn mission

Abstract

Dawn's main objective is to characterize two of the largest bodies in the main asteroid belt: asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres. This will provide important information about the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch, as these protoplanets remaining practically intact since they were formed. Despite Ceres is only slightly farther from the Sun than Vesta, these objects have followed a very different evolutionary path as a consequence of the diversity of processes that operated during the first stages of solar system evolution. Thus, although no meteorites have been linked to this dwarf planet, the detection of a possible signature of hydrated minerals reveals that water seems to have played an important role in the evolution of Ceres. However, Vesta appears to be a dry, differentiated body, with evidence of lava flows. Telescopic observations reveal also the existence of an impact crater with a diameter of about 460 km near its south pole. The event that generated this crater may have excavated about 1% of Vesta. In fact, this catastrophic event is believed to be responsible for the existence on Earth of fragments of Vesta. Thus, although no samples of Ceres are currently available, meteorites coming from Vesta are known to exist. These achondrites are magmatic rocks known as HEDs for their principal constituents: howardites, eucrites and diogenites. The arrival of Dawn to Vesta on July 2011 offers an excellent opportunity for education and outreach. Thus, an exhibition was organized with the aim to promote the public's interest for the Dawn mission and the role that meteorites play for our knowledge of Vesta and other bodies of the Solar System. This outreach activity was entitled "Vesta and Ceres: the Origins of the Solar System" (Fig. 1). It took place between October 2011 and January 2012.