Impact Excavation on Asteroid 4 Vesta: Hubble Space Telescope Results

Hubble Space Telescope images of asteroid 4 Vesta obtained during the favorable 1996 apparition show an impact crater 460 kilometers in diameter near the south pole. Color measurements within the 13-kilometer-deep crater are consistent with excavation deep into a high-calcium pyroxene-rich crust or olivine upper mantle. About 1 percent of Vesta was excavated by the crater formation event, a volume sufficient to account for the family of small Vesta-like asteroids that extends to dynamical source regions for meteorites. This crater may be the site of origin for the howardite, eucrite, and diogenite classes of basaltic achondrite meteorites.