Why is Vesta so bright?
Vesta is the brightest asteroid, its surface being roughly three times as bright as Earth’s moon. Its unusual brightness suggests it might possess a strong magnetic field, which could help shield it from particles driven by the solar wind that would ordinarily dirty the asteroid, Russell said. The Dawn spacecraft is currently venturing to the largest bodies in the asteroid belt—Vesta and Ceres—but it lacks a magnetometer to probe magnetic fields, meaning a future mission is needed to solve the mystery’s of Vesta’s brightness. Is Earth safe? Much of the study of space rocks is aimed, ultimately, at the same question: Are there any asteroids aimed at us? Right now, there are no asteroids known to be on a collision course with our planet. It’s the unknown rocks that scientists worry about. “Statistically, if you go to Vegas to gamble, you know you’re going to lose eventually, and in the same way, we know with at least small asteroids, one will hit the Earth eventually,” Russell said. Stil
