Dawn Gets One Last, Close Look at Ceres

[Buster's Uncle]

Dawn Gets One Last, Close Look at Ceres
Popular Mechanics
Avery Thompson  October 20, 2017






For the past three years, the Dawn spacecraft has been dutifully orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's mapped the entire surface of the world, discovered ice and volcanoes, and revealed the presence of organic molecules-the building blocks of life-hiding in a crater.

Dawn has lived a long, successful life, but its time is running out. The fuel in the spacecraft's tank is running low, and a few months back we reported that NASA was debating what to do with the last bit. Now, they've made their decision: Dawn will spend the last of its remaining fuel getting closer to the surface of the dwarf planet than ever before.

Back in July, when NASA was first debating the possibilities, one of the options on the table was for Dawn to leave Ceres and explore a completely different asteroid. With dozens of possibilities to choose from, choosing that option could have let us learn a great deal about the different types of asteroids in the belt.

Instead, we get to learn even more about Ceres. Dawn will orbit around 120 miles above the dwarf planet, training its cameras and instruments at the surface. These instruments will be able to gather information at a higher resolution than ever before, and will send back the most detailed photos of the world yet.

This is important, valuable information, and it could lead to many new scientific discoveries. There were no bad choices for NASA to make here. Ceres still has a lot to teach us, and Dawn gets the opportunity to take risks and explore even more of the dwarf planet. Still, it would have been exciting to see brand new images from a completely unexplored world.

Dawn will continue to orbit Ceres for about a year, when it will finally run out of fuel. So until then, we can only hope it gets as much data from the dwarf planet as possible.

Source: NASA


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