[meteorite-list] Dawn Enters Asteroid Belt -- For Good

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:55:02 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200911171855.nAHIt2wm025412_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2361

Dawn Enters Asteroid Belt -- For Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
November 13, 2009

ASTEROID BELT -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft re-entered our solar system's
asteroid belt today, Nov. 13, and this time it will stay there.

Dawn first entered the belt (whose lower boundary may be defined as the
greatest distance Mars gets from the sun (249,230,000 kilometers, or
154,864,000 miles) in June 2008. It remained within the belt for 40 days
before its carefully planned orbital path brought it below the asteroid
belt's lower boundary.

This time around, Dawn's flight path will remain above this hypothetical
lower boundary for the rest of the mission and for the foreseeable
future - Dawn will become the first human-made object to take up
permanent residence in the asteroid belt.

The mission of the 1,098-kilogram (2,421-pound) Dawn spacecraft is to
reconnoiter Vesta and Ceres, the asteroid belt's two most massive
inhabitants -- the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres. The goal of
this eight-year, 4.9-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) mission is to
answer basic questions about the formation of planets in our solar
system. NASA's unmanned Dawn spacecraft will be the first ever to orbit
two planetary bodies on a single voyage. Dawn is 619 days away from
arrival at its first celestial objective, asteroid Vesta.

For more information on Dawn please visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
Received on Tue 17 Nov 2009 01:55:02 PM PST