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Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. [1] In the fulfillment of that mission—the ninth in NASA's Discovery Program — Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey ...
The spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It went into orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. Dawn performed near-global geological, chemical, and geophysical mapping of Ceres [8] until its hydrazine fuel was depleted on October 31, 2018.
Dawn was the first mission to visit a dwarf planet, and the first mission outside the Earth-moon system to orbit two distinct solar system targets. After orbiting Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, it arrived at Ceres on March 6, 2015. Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Thereafter, the spacecraft headed to Ceres and started to orbit the dwarf planet on March 6, 2015. [104] In November 2018, NASA reported that Dawn had run out of fuel, effectively ending its mission; it will remain in orbit around Ceres, but can no longer communicate with Earth. [105]
The mountain was discovered on images taken by the Dawn spacecraft in orbit around Ceres in 2015. [6] It is estimated to have an average height of about 4 km (2.5 mi; 13,000 ft) and a maximum height of about 5 km (3.1 mi; 16,000 ft) on its steepest side; it is about 20 km (12 mi; 66,000 ft) wide at the base. [1]
Dawn: NASA: 16 July 2011 – 5 September 2012 orbiter success first spacecraft to orbit two different celestial bodies; now orbiting Ceres: 2007-043A: 4179 Toutatis: Chang'e 2: CNSA: 13 December 2012 flyby success came within 3.2 km (2.0 mi) to Toutatis: 2010-050A: 2000 DP107: PROCYON: University of Tokyo / JAXA: 12 May 2016 [49] flyby failure
Ceres makes up 40% of the estimated (2394 ± 5) × 10 18 kg mass of the asteroid belt, and it has 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 times the mass of the next asteroid, Vesta, but it is only 1.3% the mass of the Moon. It is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium , but some deviations from an equilibrium shape have yet to be explained. [ 64 ]
During the mission, an uncrewed Orion capsule spent 10 days in a distant retrograde 60,000 kilometers (37,000 mi) orbit around the Moon before returning to Earth. [10] Artemis II, the first crewed mission of the program, will launch four astronauts in 2025 [11] on a free-return flyby of the Moon at a distance of 8,900 kilometers (5,500 mi). [12 ...