NASA's Dawn mission to asteroid Vesta has revealed more images of the asteroid's topography and found that the asteroid has a mountain that is three times the size of Earth's Mount Everest.

The new image taken by the Dawn probe shows the location of the mountain in the center of a crater in the south polar region of the asteroid. The giant mountain is about 22 kilometers in height and has a base of about 180 kilometers making it only 3 kilometers smaller than the highest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars which is about 25 kilometers high and 624 kilometers at its base. Earth's tallest mountain Everest is only 8,848 meters.

"Vesta is full of surprises," said Paul Schenk, a scientist involved in the Dawn mission of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, during a news conference. "We had indications before the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft that the south polar region would be interesting. Hubble photos showed a ripple there, but with the resolution it was difficult to know what it was."

The hunch was proven when scientists looked at ripple and found it was an impact crater called the Rheasilvia Basin about 475 kilometers wide with the mountain in its center. Vesta has proven to be more of an enigma to scientists. High-resolutions images taken by the Dawn probe show evidence that Vesta evolved more like a planet with an inner core most likely made of iron and a mix of minerals on its surface.

Vesta at about 529 kilometers wide is the second largest body in the asteroid belt in our solar system located between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids are remnants from when the solar system was born. Previous research has shown that Vesta could have had a global ocean of magma similar to what existed on the moon. In fact researchers believe that Vesta could have been a planet in the making before its growth was stunted by the gravitational pull of Jupiter.

The Dawn mission has given scientist new insights into how rocky planets like Mars and Earth might have looked back in the solar system's infancy. Studying Vesta will also help NASA plan for a future manned mission to a yet-to-be determined asteroid. The Dawn spacecraft reached Vesta in July and will spend a year gathering data before moving to an even bigger asteroid, the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015.

Meanwhile interested space explorers can take a virtual tour of the asteroid with this 3D video released by NASA created from images from the Dawn probe. The video shows Vesta from an altitude of 2,700km above the asteroid. The video also shows the massive mountain at the south pole. Viewers should slip on a pair of 3D glasses to take in the full effect.