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Dawn spacecraft begins orbiting around dwarf planet Ceres: NASA

US space agency NASA has said that its space probe involving Dawn spacecraft has commenced orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in order to make valuable discovery into the main asteroid belt of our solar system.

The probe, which is the first to orbit a dwarf planet, will continue to stay for 16 months over the celestial body that has remained mysterious for the scientists for long. The main aim of the probe is to study Ceres’ structure and collect important clues about the dwarf planet in order to help the mankind in better understand the formation of the planets.

The space probe was captured by the gravity of the dwarf planet at 1239 GMT, around 38,000 miles (61,000 km) from the surface of Ceres.

About an hour later, the spacecraft sent a signal to the mission controllers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA in Pasadena, California. “It was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine,” NASA said in a statement.

Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, “Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometer) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home.”

Ceres is the largest known object located in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. Protoplanet Vesta is the second largest known celestial object found in the asteroid belt. Dawn spacecraft orbited around the protoplanet Vesta between July 2011 and September 2012, before finally leaving for Ceres.

Ceres has an average diameter of 590 miles. It makes a full rotation in every nine hours. NASA is hoping for a large amount of data once the spacecraft’s orbit commences and it begin sending more and more valuable images.

NASA’s Dawn probe to reveal mysterious dwarf planet Ceres soon [VIDEO]

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US space agency NASA’s probe at Ceres is finally going to yield results as its Dawn spacecraft will arrive at the surface of the dwarf planet on Friday morning.

With its arrival, Dawn will commence unraveling Ceres’ mysteries, including the two bright spots blazing on its cratered surface, which have been baffling the scientists for a long time.

“It’s clear that discoveries lie ahead and Ceres will be revealed in stunning detail, just like Vesta,” Carol Raymond, Deputy Principal Investigator of Dawn probe mission, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a press conference on Monday.

NASA’s investigative spacecraft is set to slip into Ceres’ orbit at 7:20 am EST (1220 GMT) on Friday. With its arrival, Dawn will wrap up its two-and-a-half years of a deep-space chase mission to unravel the dwarf planet.

Ceres is the largest object located in the main asteroid belt lying between Jupiter and Mars.

If everything goes well as per the plan, Dawn will become the first ever spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet and circle two celestial bodies beyond the Earth-moon system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP2zbGFXyk0

Dawn orbited around the protoplanet Vesta, which is the second-largest celestial body located in the asteroid belt apart from Ceres. The spacecraft orbited Vesta between July 2011 and September 2012, before finally departing for Ceres.

The NASA scientists are hoping that Dawn’s observations will immensely contribute in understanding what led to the generation of mysterious bright spots at Ceres.

“These bright spots were extremely surprising to our team of scientists, and they have been puzzling everybody who’s seen them,” Raymond said.

According to Raymond, the two bright spots suggest the presence of highly reflective material, most likely salts or ice, on Ceres.

NASA will also be probing for signs of water vapor originating from Ceres’ surface— a stimulating phenomenon that was first noticed in 2013 by the researchers who were studying data collected by Herschel Space Observatory in Europe.

The NASA probe won’t commence its science experiments right away. Rather, the spacecraft will be spending nearly six weeks while spiraling down to its first orbit, which will be completed on April 23. The spacecraft will then examine Ceres with the help of a series of orbits, with the last one taking it to within only 235 miles (378 km) of the surface of the dwarf planet, until June 2016, when the mission is scheduled to end.

NASA’s Dawn spots two ‘bright spot’ on dwarf planet Ceres

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The scientists have discovered not just one, but two bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres.

The two bright spots on Ceres were spotted by US space agency NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

According to NASA scientists, Dawn detected the spots as it got closer to the planet’s orbit and captured latest images from a distance of approximately 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres.

The new images show a bright spot standing out in previous photographs laying close to yet another bright area.

Dawn’s principal investigator Chris Russell said that the bright spot at Ceres have a lesser brighter companion in apparently same basin. This may be indicating towards a volcano-like origin of the bright spots, but the scientists would have to wait longer for images with better resolution before deriving any geologic interpretations.

Dawn used its ion propulsion system to enter into the orbit around the dwarf planet on March 6.

The scientists are hoping to receive better images with rare view and higher clarity of the dwarf planet in the next 16 months. According to them, this will help in better understanding of its origin as well as evolution of Ceres and its surface.

Lead study investigator Andreas Nathues said, “The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us.”

Dawn spacecraft visited the massive asteroid Vesta between 2011 and 2012, and delivered over 30,000 images of the body accompanies with several other measurements. This provided close insights into its composition as well as geological history.

The average diameter of Ceres is 590 miles (950 kilometers), while Vesta’s average diameter is 326 miles (525 kilometers). Both Ceres and Vesta are the two giant bodies located in the asteroid belt, lying between Jupiter and Mars.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captures incredible images of dwarf planet Ceres

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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has caught incredible images of its target dwarf planet, Ceres.

The dwarf planet, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has an average diameter of 950 km.

Scientists believe the small planet contains a large amount of ice. But several other scientists think the surface of the planet conceals an ocean.

Marc Rayman, Dawn’s mission director and chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, “We know so much about the solar system and yet so little about dwarf planet Ceres. Now, Dawn is ready to change that.”

The new photographs caught by the cameras installed on the Dawn spacecraft show the dwarf planet at 27 pixels resolution across, nearly three times better than the calibration photos that were taken in early December.

The outstanding photographs of Ceres so far were caught by the NASA’s advanced Hubble Space Telescope in the years 2003 and 2004.

These latest photographs, which offer about 80 percent of Hubble resolution, was taken by Dawn on January 13.

According to the NASA scientists, Dawn will capture many more images of the dwarf planet over the next several weeks that are increasingly better.

The spacecraft will capture into orbit around the dwarf planet on March 6.

The scientists said that Ceres’ images will keep on improving as the spacecraft went closer to the planet’s surface during its 16-month long study.

Project leader Andreas Nathues, for the camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Gottingen-based Solar System Research, said, “Already, the latest images hint at first surface structures such as craters.”

The arrival of Dawn at Ceres’ surface will mark the first ever landing of any spacecraft on a dwarf planet.

The Dawn spacecraft has already sent over 30,000 photographs and many close insights about the second most giant body, named Vesta, in the asteroid belt.

NASA’s Dawn captures rare navigational view of dwarf planet Ceres

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The Dawn spacecraft of US space agency NASA has captured a close-up view of Ceres with the help of its framing camera and obtained some of the rare navigational images of over half of its target dwarf planet.

The researchers and space scientists at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) have been closely analyzing these navigational images of Ceres. According to them, they have successfully derived the differences related to the albedo features that were identified by the popular Hubble telescope over the portion of Ceres which is observed by Dawn.

PSI Research Scientist Jian-Yang Li said that the reproduction of observations made by the Hubble is very crucial to comprehend the nature of surface of the dwarf planet Ceres. According to Li, the recent episodic water vapor detections near the surface of Ceres by the Herschel Space Observatory at a longitude observed by the Dawn Spacecraft might arise from the activity that could bring numerous changes in the Ceres’ surface with the passing time.

Lead investigator Andreas Nathues said that the new observations already indicate towards the presence of the first surface structures like craters.

Mark Sykes, CEO of the Planetary Science Institute who also co-investigated the mission, said that there is huge possibility of existence of at least one large extended structure at the planet’s surface.

If the structure is tectonic, it could offer greater insight into the interior processes of the dwarf planet, Sykes said.

According to the scientists, the models of Ceres’ interior indicate possibility of an outer ice-rich layer and subsurface oceans.

Dawn’s next observation of Ceres is scheduled on January 26, 2015 and the scientists say this time the images will exceed the resolution of the much-advanced Hubble telescope.

Dawn spacecraft will be captured by the gravity of Ceres on March 6 this year and this event will mark the first time when a spacecraft has ever taken orbit of two solar system targets and studied the protoplanet Vesta for 14 long months.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft to enter dwarf planet Ceres’ orbit in March

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US space agency NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which is on the multi-year tour of the asteroid belt giants, is now approaching its next destination Ceres. According to the scientists, the spacecraft will enter the orbit if Ceres in March this year.

Ceres, which is considered to be a dwarf planet, is the largest body in the asteroid belt. Notably, no other spacecraft has ever visited Ceres before.

The entry of Dawn in Ceres’ orbit this March will mark the probes’ second such visit to a prior unexplored asteroid belt object.

“Ceres is almost a complete mystery to us. Ceres, unlike Vesta, has no meteorites linked to it to help reveal its secrets. All we can predict with confidence is that we will be surprised,” Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, said.

The American space agency said Dawn, which was launched in 2007, will become the first spacecraft to make an entry to Ceres’ atmosphere.

“In an ion propulsion engine, an electrical charge is applied to xenon gas, and charged metal grids accelerate the xenon particles out of the thruster. These particles push back on the thruster as they exit, creating a reaction force that propels the spacecraft,” the US space agency elaborated.

The dwarf planet Ceres, which has a diameter about 590 miles, lies between the orbits of two planets, namely Jupiter and Mars.

Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director at JPL, said, “Orbiting both Vesta and Ceres would be truly impossible with conventional propulsion. Thanks to ion propulsion, we’re about to make history as the first spaceship ever to orbit two unexplored alien worlds.”

Dawn had in 2011 toured the protoplanet Vesta, which is among the largest asteroids in the solar system.

NASA’s Dawn commences approach phase towards dwarf planet Ceres

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US space agency NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has already commenced its approach phase towards dwarf planet Ceres. This would be for the first time when any spacecraft will land on the dwarf planet.

Recently, Dawn had emerged from solar conjunction during which it was on the sun’s opposite side that resulted in limiting the communication with antennas on the planet Earth.

But now as the Dawn spacecraft has again re-established its communication with the Earth, the mission controllers have started programming the maneuvers essential for the next stage of the rendezvous, which they term as the Ceres approach phase. Currently, Dawn is 640,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) from Ceres and approaching toward the dwarf planet at around 725 kilometers per hour (450 miles per hour).

The arrival of spacecraft at the dwarf planet Ceres would mark the first time when a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets. Now, Dawn has completed the five years of accumulated thrust time. The time span is far more than any other spacecraft.

In the coming months, Dawn is going to offer continually improving views of Ceres, before arriving on the planet. By the January-end, the images of the spacecraft and other data would be collected by NASA. These images would be the best ever caught of the dwarf planet.

The American space agency has launched Dawn in 2007. It had been scheduled to enter the Ceres orbit in March next year.

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