[meteorite-list] Dawn Gets Closer Views of Ceres

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 10:30:42 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201502051830.t15IUgqX012854_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4475

Dawn Gets Closer Views of Ceres
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
February 4, 2015

[Animation]
This image is one several images NASA's Dawn spacecraft took on approach
to Ceres on Feb. 4, 2015 at a distance of about 90,000 miles (145,000
kilometers) from the dwarf planet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, on approach to dwarf planet Ceres, has acquired
its latest and closest-yet snapshot of this mysterious world. The image
of Ceres, taken on Feb. 4, 2015, from a distance of about 90,000 miles
(145,000 kilometers), is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19174
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19179

At a resolution of 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel, the pictures represent
the sharpest images to date of Ceres.

After the spacecraft arrives and enters into orbit around the dwarf planet,
it will study the intriguing world in great detail. Ceres, with a diameter
of 590 miles (950 kilometers), is the largest object in the main asteroid
belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project
of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall
Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Virginia, designed
and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max
Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, with significant
contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary
Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and
Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared
mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the
Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is
managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and
Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los
Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary
Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

For more information about Dawn, visit:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov


Media Contact

Elizabeth Landau
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
Elizabeth.Landau at jpl.nasa.gov

2015-051
Received on Thu 05 Feb 2015 01:30:42 PM PST