Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The South Pole of Asteroid Vesta

[Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA]

Most will think this is a little drab, but I saw, wow! Nice close-up.

[this is what I send out in FReepmail to people who join APoD, I think it’s getting a little long]

Welcome aboard the APOD Ping list!

Astronomy Picture of the Day — the ‘blog
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2719642/posts

Astronomy Picture of the Day
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/apod-chat/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/apod/index

Astronomy
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/astronomy-chat/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/astronomy-bloggers/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/astronomy/index

Science
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/science-chat/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/science-bloggers/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/science/index

Obviously it's another mechanism now badly eroded.

Mercury and the Moon share certain peculiarities that suggest both were used to launch lightweight crustal elements from Venus and the Earth outward to the Asteroid Belt. At that point those materials would be further launched to awaiting mining ships around the rim.

Vesta in those times would have had an enormously long carbon fiber boom arm as well as some advanced design atomic engines to power its rotation.

Other, smaller, asteroids would be attached to the other end of the boom arm, and then launched by the rotating Vesta/boom array out beyond Jupiter.

Fortunately for us only 60% of Earth's phosphate and organic crust was stripped away before the galactic hive ships moved on to another system. Venus, alas, was totally stripped and today is a wasteland of heavier lower mantle materials and CO2.

No doubt NASA will be launching robot satellites to Vesta to check out the possibility of there being any higher technology debris there. We are already launching probes to the Moon's South Pole in the vicinity of the deepest crater in the Solar system smack dab dead center there.

Looks as if something was in the process of boiling away when it all froze solid.

It’s a fascinating image, and I’m looking forward to the updates as Dawn gets a closer look.

What’s Dawn’s last name? ;’)

"...ragged circular features that cover most of the lower right of the 500-kilometer sized object."

The crack of Dawn?

Robotto?

I think that’s my ex wife’s brain.

What have you been smoking?(can I have some?)

I like the way you think!

So are the Harvesters going Galactic Spinwards or Anti-Spinwards? And if so, what is the timetable to come back for the Organic materials they missed the first time?

Thanks for these postings appreciate and aware of the efforts you go through in doing so.

...I bookmarked all these and Ad mods cursed me for crashing the server!!! /sarc

It's possible they are traveling perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic so their jumps between galaxies may be quite stupendous, but that would keep them within the zone of sequential propagation of "their type of galaxy" with its unique abundance of certain elements.

One thing we know for sure is that they are made up of pretty much the same stuff we are because THAT'S WHAT THEY TOOK!

They may also be "us" ~ some theorize that some time after the Great Iron catastrophe (where all the iron collapsed to the core), and still well after all the residual lighter gases were blown away from the Earth's core by our then new Sun, they sent probes ahead searching for our kind of exposed gas giant core (a rocky planet). Once they found such a planet ~ with free water ~ the automated probes would seed the planet with special lifeforms that could separate out the different chemicals of life for deposit in uniform bodies. We still see the results of this ~ long after the "Harvesters" have passed by there are extremophiles that can metabolize just certain elements and then deposit them in cluster deposits ~ sulfur, iron, phosphorus, calcium, etc.

These would be launched into orbit near the Moon for later relaunch to the asteroid belt.

I suspect the Harvesters know the planets they leave behind will be "adjusted" appropriately and could be used as homeworlds in later times.

They may also be "us"

Could be "we" are merely the result of a containment breach. Someone lapsed in the "pack it in, pack it out" department and "we" are just bugsh!+. Some of us anyway... ;-))