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15 Minute Science -- A Ride Around Vesta
by
palantir
for
SciTech
Community
(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Wednesday, May. 23, 2012
Wednesday, May. 23, 2012
at
5:30:04pm PDT
Welcome Back Kostronomers!
I dream of
dawn
s over dwarf planets. Thanks to the
German Aerospace Center
(DRL) and one of my favorite sites of all time
Astronomy Picture of the Day
one dream has come true.
One sunny September day a Delta II rocket finally stood tall and ready. Glitches and scheduling conflicts had delayed the giant machine's launch for months but on September's 27th day it would fly carrying another NASA masterpiece into space.
The Dawn mission
began its long journey to the asteroid belt that day nearly 5 years ago. Using its innovative
ion drive
Dawn would electrostatically accelerate Xenon ions to generate the delta-v needed to first rendevous with Mars (for a slingshot course correction and gravity assist) and then to Vesta in the main asteroid belt.
It took about 15 months for Dawn to arrive at Mars and 31 more to get to Vesta itself. Before then the best views of Vesta and Ceres (Dawn will go on to Ceres in July of this year) were made by the Hubble Telescope (see below).
Small Worlds Ceres and Vesta
Credit :
NASA
,
ESA
, L.McFadden, J.Y.Li (
UMCP
), M.Mutchler, Z.Levay (
STScI
),
P.Thomas (
Cornell
), J.Parker, E.Young (
SwRI
), C.Russell, B.Schmidt (
UCLA
)
So, from February 2009 until orbital insertion at Vesta in July of 2011 Dawn spritzed Xenon ions to gain the energy needed to increase it's velocity and subsequently it's orbit. It was certainly worth the wait for
Marc Rayman
who blogged the mission blog at
JPL.
The
mission website
is very informative. If you're curious about the Dawn mission you could spend a lot of time there. As a matter of fact here's Dawn's view of Vesta from about 20 minutes ago (it's 7:00pm May 23).
You should check it out! Click on the pic, it may have updated the current view.
But what about dreams of Dawn over Vesta? Sometimes dreams can come true.
Virtual Flight Over Asteroid Vesta
Images Credit:
NASA
,
JPL-Caltech
,
UCLA
, MPS, DLR, IDA;
Animation:
German Aerospace Center
(DRL)