Science
Related: About this forum"...we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions"
On to Ceres: Dawn Spacecraft Ready to Say Farewell to Asteroid Vesta
by NANCY ATKINSON on AUGUST 31, 2012
The feat has never been accomplished before and next weeks departure for the Dawn spacecraft from Vesta will be monumental. Dawn is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant solar system destinations. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta on Sept. 4 PDT (Sept. 5 EDT) to start its two-and-a-half-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres.
Thrust is engaged, and we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions, said Marc Rayman, Dawns chief engineer and mission director. We are feeling somewhat wistful about concluding a fantastically productive and exciting exploration of Vesta, but now have our sights set on dwarf planet Ceres.
In the video above, the Dawn team looks back at the highlights of the year-plus stay in orbit around Vesta. Dawns orbit provided close-up views of Vesta, revealing unprecedented detail about the giant asteroid. The mission revealed that Vesta completely melted in the past, forming a layered body with an iron core. The spacecraft also revealed the scarring from titanic collisions Vesta suffered in its southern hemisphere, surviving not one but two colossal impacts in the last two billion years. Without Dawn, scientists would not have known about the dramatic troughs sculpted around Vesta, which are ripples from the two south polar impacts.
We went to Vesta to fill in the blanks of our knowledge about the early history of our solar system, said Christopher Russell, Dawns principal investigator, based at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Dawn has filled in those pages, and more, revealing to us how special Vesta is as a survivor from the earliest days of the solar system. We can now say with certainty that Vesta resembles a small planet more closely than a typical asteroid.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97150/on-to-ceres-dawn-spacecraft-ready-to-say-farewell-to-asteroid-vesta/
a geek named Bob
(2,715 posts)Book me on the next flight...
First class, please. Also, I'd like the full breakfast meal on the flight out from earth.
eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)This is some of the most exciting new technology in space travel -- more ion engines to follow.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)So sci-fi!