First Announcement Available Now

The workshop on Vesta in the Light of Dawn:  First Exploration of a Protoplanet in the Asteroid Belt will be held February 3–5, 2014, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), located in the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) building, 3600 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston TX 77058.

The Dawn mission, launched in 2007, has completed the first detailed mapping of Vesta, the largest asteroid and largest protoplanet visited to date. Vesta is also the probable source of the howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorite suite and thereby provides a direct link to materials and events in the heart of the Mars-Jupiter region of the solar system.

Dawn mission results provide key insights into the formation and geologic evolution of Vesta and into the processes shaping the asteroid belt over time. The scope of this workshop, the first dedicated to Vesta as a planetary body, includes dynamics, impact mechanics and impactor flux, internal and surface composition, shape and internal structure, formation and geologic history as revealed by spacecraft observations, and meteorite analysis. Other topics are welcome that relate to Vesta and the asteroid main belt, particularly its origin and evolution in the context of the solar system based on spacecraft and Earth-based observations and laboratory analysis.

More information about this workshop and an indication of interest form can be found at:

http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/vesta2014/

Note: All electronic submission forms are part of the USRA Meeting Portal, which requires users to set up a personal profile to access our electronic forms (setting up a profile is quick and easy, requiring only about four minutes of your time).