NASA’s Dawn Mission to Asteroid Belt Comes to End “NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system’s earliest chapter. Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, […]
Brine Deposits Are The Source of Ceres’ Bright Spots “Bright spots seen by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres are likely salt deposits, a paper published Dec. 9 in Nature says. Ceres has more than 130 bright areas, and most of them are associated with impact craters. Observations from Dawn’s Framing Camera suggest the occurrence of salts originating from Ceres’ interior. These salts are consistent with […]
New Images of Ceres “New images of dwarf planet Ceres, taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, show the cratered surface of this mysterious world in sharper detail than ever before. These are among the first snapshots from Dawn’s second mapping orbit, which is 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above Ceres.” Keith’s note: Looks like someone at NASA PAO used Dawn’s ion drive to paint QR code graffiti on Ceres. Just sayin’.
Dawn Captures Sharper Images of Ceres “Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination.”
Maximizing Dawn’s Scientific Mission at Ceres: SBAG Report “At the last SBAG meeting, it was implied that the Dawn at Vesta Participating Scientist Program had not been fully successful. To gain insight into the issue, SBAG undertook a confidential survey of all the U.S. Dawn at Vesta Participating Scientists, receiving responses from 15 of 18 individuals. A sixteenth person did not want to participate. Responses ranged from extremely positive to […]
Take a Virtual, High-Resolution Tour of Vesta, NASA “An atlas of the giant asteroid Vesta, created from images taken as NASA’s Dawn mission flew around the object (also known as a protoplanet), is now accessible for the public to explore online. The set of maps was created from mosaics of 10,000 images taken by Dawn’s framing camera instrument at a low altitude of about 130 miles (210 kilometers).”
NASA Dawn Mission Status Report 14 August 2012 “During a planned communications pass on Aug. 9, the team learned that the reaction wheel had been powered off. Telemetry data from the spacecraft suggest the wheel developed excessive friction, similar to the experience with another Dawn reaction wheel in June 2010. The Dawn team demonstrated during the cruise to Vesta in 2011 that, if necessary, they could complete the cruise to […]
NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta “NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.” Keith’s note: The last image to be publicly released was taken on 9 July – more than a week ago. Yet Cassini, Opportunity, and other missions send back dozens of new images every day – images that […]
Dawn Spacecraft to Enter Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta on July 15 “On July 15, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will begin a prolonged encounter with the asteroid Vesta, making the mission the first to enter orbit around a main-belt asteroid. The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Dawn will study Vesta for one year, and observations will help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system’s […]
Dawn Nears Start of Year-Long Stay at Giant Asteroid Vesta NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on track to begin the first extended visit to a large asteroid. The mission expects to go into orbit around Vesta on July 16 and begin gathering science data in early August. Vesta resides in the main asteroid belt and is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth.