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NASA Dawn mission at Ceres unit features, timeline, spacecraft Dawn mission details
Dawn Mission launches by NASA in September 2007 and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Dawn Mision is a space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the aim of studying two known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and the dwarf planet, Ceres. It is currently in orbit around Ceres.
The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Its major components are contributed by NASA’s European partners such as from German Aerospace Center, Italian National Astrophysical Institute, and Italian Space Agency.
Dawn created history by being the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies and the first-ever spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres. It orbited giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months from 2011 to 2012, then continued on to dwarf planet Ceres, where it has been in orbit since March 2015.
The spacecraft is also the first-ever to visit a dwarf planet. It accomplished the feat just a few months before New Horizons flew by Pluto in July 2015. It is NASA’s first exploratory mission to use ion propulsion to enter orbits and exit orbits of multiple celestial bodies.
Previous multi-target missions using conventional drives, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys.
