In April, 2012, the Dawn spacecraft was a mere 272 kilometers (170 miles) from the surface of the asteroid Vesta when it took this wonderful picture of the crater Licinia:
[And oh yes, you want to click to envirgingoddessenate - it links to a picture of the area around the crater as well.] Licinia is about 25 km (15 miles) across - too big to fit in Dawn's field-of-view from that height. But it does show spectacular detail, including what look like landslides into the bowl from the crater rim; you can see them as dark streaks running down the crater wall. Mounds of material at the base of the crater wall indicate bigger landslides, too. Vesta's gravity is far weaker than Earth's - it's about 1/40th what we experience here - but even then, it's a force that won't be denied.
While I was inspecting the crater floor, I ...
