Key facts
- Category
- Asteroids
- Object class
- Protoplanetary asteroid
- Mass
- ~257 quadrillion metric tons
- Scale fact
- 573 kmmaximum extent
- Estimated age
- ~4.56 billion years
- Composition
- Basaltic crust, rocky mantle, nickel-iron core
4 Vesta
573 kmmaximum extent
Visual creditDawn 2011 / NASA / JPL / MPS / DLR / IDA / Björn Jónsson / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Vesta is one of the largest bodies in the asteroid belt and was mapped in detail by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Unlike most asteroids, it separated into crust, mantle, and core early in Solar System history, making it a surviving protoplanetary world rather than a simple leftover rock.
Vesta formed early enough for heat from short-lived radioactive elements to separate it into a basaltic crust, rocky mantle and metal-rich core—differentiation more often associated with planets than with small asteroids. NASA estimates that this happened within the first one or two million years of Solar System history.
Dawn mapped Vesta’s gravity, minerals and giant south-polar Rheasilvia basin. Those measurements strengthened the link between Vesta and the howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites found on Earth, allowing laboratory samples and spacecraft observations to describe the same differentiated body.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- 4 Vesta on Wikipedia
- Universe journey
- Sun & inner planets
Size neighbors
Objects near 4 Vesta on the scale
Shared physical scale
438km
Sources
References for 4 Vesta
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- 4 Vesta — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Dawn 2011 / NASA / JPL / MPS / DLR / IDA / Björn Jónsson, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.