Space & Astronomy

Dawn spacecraft on final approach to Ceres

By T.K. Randall
December 31, 2014

Image: Rendering of the Dwarf Planet Ceres
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA / (PD) Launched in 2007, Dawn's exploratory endeavors have already seen it spend 14 months in orbit around Vesta, a protoplanet located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Now it is on its way to Ceres, a dwarf planet in the same region of the solar system that no spacecraft has ever visited.

"Ceres is almost a complete mystery to us," said mission principal investigator Christopher Russell."Ceres, unlike Vesta, has no meteorites linked to it to help reveal its secrets. All we can predict with confidence is that we will be surprised."

A small world with a diameter of around 590 miles, Ceres is nonetheless the largest object in the asteroid belt and may even be home to a subterranean ocean of liquid water.

The mission, which will be the first to see a spacecraft orbit two separate bodies, has been made possible thanks to Dawn's pioneering ion propulsion system which is a lot more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion.

"Orbiting both Vesta and Ceres would be truly impossible with conventional propulsion," said Dawn's chief engineer and mission director Marc Rayman. "Thanks to ion propulsion, we're about to make history as the first spaceship ever to orbit two unexplored alien worlds."

Source: Astronomy Magazine

Tags: Dawn, Ceres