NASA - Dawn's Mission to the Asteroid Belt

The Dawn spacecraft will employ ion propulsion to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formations. Ceres and Vesta reside in the extensive zone between Mars and Jupiter together with many other smaller bodies, called the asteroid belt. Each has followed a very different evolutionary path constrained by the diversity of processes that operated during the first few million years of solar system evolution.

Dawn has much to offer the general public. It brings images of varied landscapes on previously unseen worlds to the public including mountains, canyons, craters, lava flows, polar caps and, possibly ancient lakebeds, streambeds and gullies. Students can follow the mission over an entire K-12 experience as the mission is built, cruises to Vesta and Ceres and returns data. The public will be able to participate through the Solar System Ambassadors and through participation on the web.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• NASA
• Science
• space
• Asteroid
• Belt
• Vesta
• Ceres
• planet

[umairs85]

i love astronomy

[Dezarus2100]

2015, Ceres. Cant waitttt..

[mquiroz90]

@Dezarus2100 Why that will it hit in 2015 or pass

[david25luvit]

We definitely need to know more about the asteroids that inhabit the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres and Vesta are fascinating in their own right....having evolved separately within the same region of space. Aptly named Dawn is truly on a mission of discovery when our solar system was created...The ion propulsion is another innovation put to practical use.

[onlywhenpissed]

Can see this from my back garden.

[ReneeNme]

Getting damn close now. Can't wait.

[akumaChirichian]

is that true that it will appear in 2015 the minor planet ceres

[KWalzar]

@kolleamm It is not coming back. It will orbit encounter and orbit Vesta starting late summer this year. After about 10 months it will leave Vesta and head to Ceres. It will encounter Ceres in 2015. The Hayabusa mission from the Japanese Space Agency did visit an asteroid (Itokawa). It landed on it and returned samples to Earth last summer. You can google Hayabusa or NASA Dawn for more cool info about these missions.

[kolleamm]

why does the satelite need to come back? I dont understand

[natinegga513]

could the ateroid belt have been a gas giant. when its mostly helium and hydrogen gas atmosphere was too close to its surfice and ignited from an interstellar collision it produced what we see today billions of years later

[bombarderoazul]

@rehzon you know these asteroids contains lots of precious resources, maybe in the future we can mine them. I have read that some asteroids contain large quantities of gold.

[iGotMetal]

@umairs85 me too, it races through my head everyday