Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. The giant asteroid Vesta that Dawn is now orbiting is on the lower left. Another larger asteroid -- and Dawn’s next target -- Ceres, is on the upper right. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It’s official.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has relayed information to confirm that it has entered an orbit around asteroid Vesta.
Dawn has become the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Researchers are now gauging the spacecraft’s orbit around the huge space rock. In doing so, experts can accurately determine the mass of the asteroid.
The spacecraft will spend a year studying Vesta before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012.
By surveying both these two distinct bodies with the same complement of instruments on the same spacecraft, the Dawn mission hopes to compare the different evolutionary path each took as well as create a picture of the early solar system overall.
Moreover, Dawn’s data stream will assist in plotting out a future human mission to an asteroid.
Future destinations
“Dawn’s study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “President Obama has directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and Dawn is gathering crucial data that will inform that mission.”
Dawn was launched in September 2007. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft.
The mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for the overall Dawn mission science.
The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission’s team.
For information about the Dawn mission, visit:
By Leonard David
Why would we want to send a person to land on an asteroid? I don’t get it.
Asteroids (some of them anyway) are prime canddates for mining many rare or unusual materials in huge quantities. If we capture an asteroid, it could provide earth with certain raw materials fo generations.
Mining….see asimov, Heinlein, Dickson, etc
Why would we want to send someone across the ocean? Everyone knows the earth is flat.
Slightly off topic at the end….I find this kind of Space Exploration to be very cool, always have. Cost, IMO, shouldn’t be one of the primary considerations, as the ROI is one that has the potential to help ALL of human kind.
Now for the slightly off topic part…..Why does every post/caption by NASA have such a large portion dedicated to the listing of all the various important players running the operation? Directorate this, and Managers that, University of where ever and on and on…makes for a post that sometimes has more “Management Credits” then actual story about the event/picture. Just wondering what the reason is for that.
Astronauts on their way to an asteroid in only 14 years? Seems unlikely, and yes I remember the Apollo program, but today’s NASA is mainly an Islamic Outreach service not a space agency!
This is great stuff and must continue.
The cost per person for the average tax payer for this mission is probably about .50 cents.