Vesta

NASA has launched a probe called Dawn, whose mission is to travel to the asteroid belt. It will first travel to observe the asteroid Vesta. After collecting data from Vesta, Dawn will intercept with Ceres where it will observe its surface features and collect data about its chemical composition.

The Dawn spacecraft will first visit Vesta in 2011. After orbiting Vesta for nine months, Dawn then will travel to Ceres, arriving in 2015.

"Then wars shall cease and savage times grow mild, / and Remus and Quirinus, brethren twain, / with hoary Faith and Vesta undefiled, / shall give the law. With iron bolt and chain / firm-closed the gates of Janus shall remain. / Within, the Fiend of Discord, high reclined / on horrid arms, unheeded in the fane, / bound with a hundred brazen knots behind, / and grim with gory jaws, his grisly teeth shall grind."

Vestal virgins had to make sure that the sacred fire of Vesta was never extinguished.

Vesta was the goddess of the hearth and home.

What I think is really exciting about this is that, after two centuries of observing this fuzzy little blob of light among the stars, Earth now has a robotic emissary in orbit at Vesta.

At a whopping 530 kilometers in diameter, Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, a vast region between the planets Mars and Jupiter that's filled with rocky debris of all sizes.

Vesta is an oblong minor planet in the asteroid belt with a mean diameter of about 525 kilometres.