I found this wonderfully readable and informative story on The Conversation: After Eight Years, NASA's Dawn Probe Brings Dwarf Planet Ceres Into Closest Focus — and it was written by "the mission director and chief engineer on Dawn at JPL." (Nothing against journalists, but sometimes they don't quite understand what they are writing about — and I should know, as an Editor on SN, I've done that myself!)
More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The probe has just reached the closest point it ever will, and is now beginning to collect its most detailed pictures and other measurements on this distant orb.
Ceres is a remnant from the dawn of our solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago. All the data Dawn is now sending back will provide insight into Ceres' history and geology, including the presence of water, past or present. Scientists believe that by studying Ceres, we can unlock some of the secrets of the epoch in which planets, including our own, formed.
But this mission isn't only for scientists. Discovering the nature of an uncharted world is a thrill that can be shared by anyone who has ever gazed up at the night sky in wonder, been curious about the universe and Earth's place in it, or felt the lure of a bold adventure into the unknown.
I happen to fall into all those categories. I fell in love with space at the age of four, and I knew by the fourth grade that I wanted to earn a doctorate in physics. (It was a few more years before I did.) My passion for the exploration of space and the grandeur of scientific discovery and understanding has never wavered. It's a dream come true for me to be the mission director and chief engineer on Dawn at JPL.
Fun fact: Ceres has a diameter of about 600 miles (~ 1000 km) implying that its surface area, if laid flat, would cover a third of the continental USA. It will be a while before all of the data is accumulated and even longer for it to be downloaded and analyzed, so keep your eyes peeled for new revelations about Ceres.
I grew up in the age of Apollo and, like the story's author, am fascinated about astronomy. Not to the extent to make it my career, but I did take a few courses in college. The mind-boggling immensity of space, the incredible forces at play, the diversity of objects "out there" never cease to inspire curiosity and wonder in me.
I'm hoping there are Soylentils who share this fascination. Stories about space don't seem to get many comments, so I wonder how much interest there actually is in such stories. If you'd like to see more stories about space, please mention it in a comment.
takyon: Mapping orbits (2015) and resolution
| Orbit phase | No. | Dates | Altitude (km; mi) | Orbital period | Resolution (km/px) | Improvement over Hubble |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RC3 | 1st | April 23, 2015 – May 9, 2015 | 13,500 km (8,400 mi) | 15 days | 1.3 | 24× |
| Survey | 2nd | June 6, 2015 – June 30, 2015 | 4,400 km (2,700 mi) | 3.1 days | 0.41 | 73× |
| HAMO | 3rd | August 17, 2015 – October 23, 2015 | 1,450 km (900 mi) | 19 hours | 0.14 (140 m) | 217× |
| LAMO | 4th | December 16, 2015 – end of mission | 375 km (233 mi) | 5.5 hours | 0.035 (35 m) | 850× |
Related Stories
NASA's Dawn Mission to Asteroid Belt Comes to End
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter.
Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennae trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.
The Dawn spacecraft launched 11 years ago to visit the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt. Currently, it's in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it will remain for decades.
Also at Ars Technica, The Verge, and Science News.
Previously: NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Nears the End of its Mission
NASA Retires the Kepler Space Telescope after It Runs Out of Hydrazine
Related:
Pluto and Ceres
After Eight Years, NASA's Dawn Probe Brings Dwarf Planet Ceres Into Closest Focus
NASA's Dawn Orbiter Finds a Mountain on Ceres
Dawn Spies Magnesium Sulphate and Possible Geological Activity on Ceres
Ceres' Cryovolcano Ahuna Mons Formed in the Geologically Recent Past
Ceres's Cryovolcanoes Viscously Relax Into Nothingness
Organic Molecules Found on Ceres
Early Asteroids May Have Been Made of Mud Rather Than Rock
Dawn Mission Extended at Ceres
Ceres May Have Had a Global Surface Ocean in the Past
Bright Areas on Ceres Suggest Geologic Activity
Dawn's Orbit Around Ceres: A New Low
Dawn's Orbit Around Ceres: First Images
Dawn Spacecraft Captures Closest-Ever Images of Ceres' Shiny Occator Crater
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 29 2015, @10:30PM
They call it LAMO, but at 35 meters per pixel, it's the best one.
The lead picture in the article is taken from an altitude of 385 km rather than 375 km, so get ready to see a stunning 2.7% increase in resolution.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 29 2015, @10:56PM
Stories about space don't seem to get many comments, so I wonder how much interest there actually is in such stories.
There's not much to say. I subscribe to this week at nasa and a bunch of other feeds and I'm sure I'll be watching video about this etc
I guess we could trade favorite space related RSS feed URLs, or ...
Note that DAWN has been there for about 9 months. This is just closest approach. There's some 3-d models of Ceres on thingiverse for 3d printer owners who need a rock like object to print. At least there won't be weird overhang issues.
DAWN gets around. It hung out at Vesta for a while. That might be the coolest part of the mission not yet discussed. OK we're visiting an asteroid. Naw, lets visit two asteroids.
Anyone have a decent website for DAWN? All I can find is low tier "kids n education" sites. AFAIK the plan is to abandon it in Ceres orbit, which seems a shame, but I donno the current state of the delta-v budget (guessing zilch) and if I search all I find is "how 2 finger paint a selfie of ceres with ur kidz" garbage.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 29 2015, @11:13PM
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ [nasa.gov] ?
I like the New Horizons site [jhuapl.edu] a lot more.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ken on Tuesday December 29 2015, @11:20PM
I, too, had a childhood interest in space exploration. I couldn't tell you who the (then) current sports stars were, but I know which astronauts were on which missions. I had a poster on the wall showing the entire chain of events for a lunar landing. I also built a model of the LLM on a moon section with the command/service modules soaring overhead. To this day, though with less intensity, I follow the astronauts. I am also following the Curiosity adventures.
I would like to see more stories about space.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:36AM
Yes! As a child, I didn't watch football games, I watched Star Trek. Besides being a scrawny, small, nerdy kid who would be laughed out of the gym if I had professed any desire whatever to be a jock, I could see that science had potential, while sports was mostly pointless and plenty miserable.
Sport wasn't even particularly useful exercise. Maybe better to do manual labor rather than games that had a little too much element of danger, things like cleaning up, gardening, building furniture, repairing cars. However, the worst part of sports were the jerks who loved treating nerds like crap, mocking us for being slow, weak, clumsy, and bad players (even when we weren't), never passing us the ball, picking us last when choosing teams, and rubbing our noses in the fact that the girls liked them and not us. Plenty of coaches, far from discouraging the meanness and unfairness, too often subtly egged on the jocks. What made things especially dicey were the sorts of callous jerks who would casually cause serious injury because it was so easy to do to a smaller, weaker person. I kept my head down as much as possible to avoid that. For instance, no way in hell was I going to try out for any team, not football, basketball, or even baseball. Not only was I not the least interested, and didn't have any chance whatsoever, there was a real possibility some jerk jock who hates intellectuals would take trying out as an opportunity to injure me. Way too easy to do in football, and only a little harder to do in basketball. Could not avoid intramural football, but at least it was flag football, no real tackling allowed. The only fun I had there was turning their contempt for me against them. The first game, as a lowly rusher on the defense, I sacked the quarterback 3 plays in a row because they stuffed themselves so full of their own supposed superiority that they thought they didn't have to assign anyone to block me. After that, they assigned a blocker, but very grudgingly, hating to waste a player on me. Why the girls embraced the cruelty and the society that shoved them into a place possibly even worse, was something I wondered at. Were the girls that superficial, so bedazzled by muscles that they were willing to put up with crap treatment for it? It seems in large part the answer was yes, yes they were, at that age anyway.
What a change when I moved on from high school to college, though there was still some bleed over. The evening that Voyager 2 was due to pass Uranus, a rare personal event happened. As I was walking back to my dorm room, a young woman from a neighboring dorm going the same general direction came up beside me and talked a little. She had no idea that a space probe was about to have a historic encounter, and, when I talked about it, didn't seem to care in the slightest. The chance encounter was going very badly. Whether she was on the make or not, doubtless pegged me as a seriously undesirable nerd. Maybe she didn't know the names of all the planets and thought I was a sick pervert rather than just a nerd, who knows? It was not meant to be, and that was probably a good thing. I imagine that at a good college, such an event would be the talk of the campus, but this was the sort of public university that let any dimwit enroll, only to flunk most of them out the first year.
So, yeah, space exploration. And, Uranus is a good shibboleth.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by joey0 on Tuesday December 29 2015, @11:35PM
Yes, more space stories!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2015, @11:46PM
These stories will take up a lot of space, though.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by CortoMaltese on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:01AM
If you'd like to see more stories about space, please mention it in a comment.
I like to read stories about space, however there is not much I can comment in them, I'm not particularly knowledgeable in that area of science besides yay space.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:31AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:24AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by snufu on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:49AM
Even if we are not experts on the topic and don't have anything to contribute to the conversation beyond 'wonder'lust, we are all space enthusiasts. How can we not be.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:04AM
I interrupt my session of KSP to check SN out while I wait for my CPU to cool down a little.
This is type of story SN should cover, not lame political news. This is the stuff that's news for nerds (I know this site isn't news for nerds :( ). Comment count is everything wrong with the world. just because $POLITICIAN did something silly gets lots of comments (45% "Democrats are crap", 45% "Republicans are crap" and 10% "Both are crap") doesn't mean it's good news, any more than American Idol is good TV just because it gets lots of viewers.
More (accessible) science coverage please. This year has been very exciting in space -- a reusable rocket and Ceres and Pluto visits.
The origin of Dawn [slashdot.org], seems like yesterday, but I guess there may be people on this site who weren't even born when Dawn launched. Dawn uses an ion drive, something out of scifi growing up, but first tested in 1998. I believe I posted a story on slashdot about it, but they seem to have lost all the pre-2000 stories.
After mankind dies out and another civilisation rises, there's a chance Dawn will be found. Earth bound satellites may well be destroyed by a combination of Kessler Syndrome and warfare, and the out-of-system probes will never be found, but a probe orbinting within a couple hundred miles of the largest asteroid may well survive.
P.S. I'm glad it successfully navigated an asteroid belt, I heard the odds were something like 3,270 to 1!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:11AM
Dawn's mission Director - Marc Rayman - was also in charge of DS1. He left a note back in 2001 [nasa.gov], very readable and well worth a few minutes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:50AM
i see what you did there
now shut up and take my republic credits
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:24AM
Don't let the low # of comments discourage you.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:35AM
...but when I'm staring up into space, words can't capture the feelings of awe I experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:07AM
While on a ROTC midshipman cruise, I was on a ship crossing the Atlantic on the way to the Med. One night, when the whole group was running darkened ship (no exterior lights), I went out to the helo pad on the stern. Wow. "Billions and billions" of stars. To this day, one of my top ten most awesome sights.
Lately, I've enjoyed being able to recognize and point out the planets, some constellations, and a few stars in the night sky. If I remember correctly, there was a time this past year that you could see the six inner most planets at the same time. (Although, most people don't seem to care)
Yes, more of these stories.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:36AM
Like many other posters before me, I will throw in my vote about the comment count, as when it comes to space exploration - I do not have much to say.
I thoroughly enjoyed the links. However, being I have never sat in the mission controller's chair, I would have withheld any commentary.
Being it was proposed that lack of commentary might mean a lack of interest, I just had to throw my two cent's worth in too. So here's my comment - even if it isn't germane to the topic. I like the space stories.
I am in awe of what NASA is doing. They top the list of government agencies I have respect for.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:44AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvH8fiM3ZGo [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:53AM
What's wrong with the narrators voice?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:21PM
I like how a video about the Ceres surface features is "-1 Off Topic".
The video comments that the regularity of Ceres's craters which all strike along the surface normal (no oblong glancing / side swiped craters, all hit "dead on") is a mathematical impossibility, esp. given the weak gravity. It reinforces idea that electrical discharge may be the cause.
And yet there are people who want to silence opposing scientific hypothesis using moderation points. You are not rational, but religious.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Thursday December 31 2015, @02:37AM
One more vote for space stories. We've been so many places by now it seems routine but once in a while you have to remind yourself that this is something people have never seen before.
I spent a couple years processing Mars photos. One day I was working on a new set that had just come down when a professor walked in and said "Wow I've never seen that area in such detail before!" He knew the planet well enough that he could tell at a glance what area had been photographed. In fact when I was first introduced to him, my friend said "nobody alive knows the planets better than this guy". Yet, for a few minutes, I was looking at something he had never seen. And that's when it hit me. I was probably the first human to see that particular spot in that much detail.
After that, no space photo was routine for me.