3D printers are all the rage when you want to make unique designs. I’ve seen intricate jewelry, custom action figures, and even 3-dimensional models of potential wells as demonstrated for a physics class. My favorite 3D creation so far, though has to be a model of asteroid 4 Vesta.

The Dawn spacecraft blew our minds when it first started sending back close-up images of “the world Dr. Seuss built.” With equatorial ridges, a set of craters like a snowman, and whatever mess is going on down at its southern pole, Vesta was truly unique. You can still contribute to Vesta science through Asteroid Mappers as Dawn continues on its journey to Ceres.

At last year’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union, I noticed a little white blob on the floor near one of the Dawn posters. I asked what it was, and Joe Wise, Dawn’s EPO manager, handed me two halves of a tiny model of Vesta. You couldn’t mistake the squished-looking ridges around the middle. They didn’t quite fit together to make a sphere, but it was close enough to see the shape and major features of the asteroid.

There have been some tweaks to the 3D model since then, and the Dawn team has made it available for download: http://t.co/EcF5wYOdb3. I don’t have access to a 3D printer at the moment, but our STEM Resource Center has one, and I intend to print a Vesta once we’ve finished moving to a different building on campus and unpacking. I’ve never actually used a 3D printer before, so this will be a fun new experiment for me. If you have access to one and want to give it a try, go ahead and tell us how it worked and send us pictures! We can have a tiny plastic Vesta family all over the globe.