42 Years Ago Today

Tranquility Base, Luna:

EDIT:
While we're on the subject, Rand Simberg at Pajamas Media about why the next phase of space exploration should be driven by private enterprise.

Dawn Reaches Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has reached the asteroid 4 Vesta and has gone into orbit.  Before going into orbit, it snapped this photograph of the main belt planetoid:

Dawn will continue to orbit Vesta for the next year, then break orbit and proceed to its next target, the dwarf planet 1 Ceres.  A decent rundown of the mission can be found here.