WE SHOULD GO THERE AND EXPLORE. Dawn’s Second Look Reveals Vesta Could Be Part of a Lost World. “While smaller asteroids in the belt are considered fragments of collisions, scientists think Vesta and the other three large objects in the belt are likely primordial and have survived for billions of years. They believe that Vesta was on its way to becoming a planet and that the Solar System’s rocky planets likely began as protoplanets just like it. But new research is casting doubt on that conclusion.”

One hypothesis: “Vesta is a broken-off chunk of a growing planet in the Solar System. Jacobson suggested this idea at a conference in the past because he wanted other researchers to consider the idea that some meteorites are pieces of debris from collisions during the era of planet formation in the Solar System.”