LOS ANGELES: NASA said observations of a dwarf planet have been delayed slightly after a communication glitch.
The Dawn spacecraft circling dwarf planet Ceres was supposed to kick off its science campaign in the morning, but it didn’t receive a command from ground controllers as expected.
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Dawn briefly went into safe mode, suspending activities while in contact with Earth. This delayed the start of the mission until Friday night, said chief engineer Marc Rayman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Rayman called it an “inconvenience” that won’t affect the overall mission.
Dawn slipped into orbit around Ceres last month after a nearly eight-year journey powered by ion propulsion engines. On Thursday, it settled into an orbit 8,400 miles above the surface of Ceres where it was to remain for several weeks before spiraling even closer.
The plan called for Dawn to photograph the ball of ice and rock and analyze the surface with its instruments. Dawn had been snapping pictures of Ceres before it entered orbit, but they were taken from far away.
Scientists hoped to get a better look at a pair of shiny spots located in a crater to determine what they are.
Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is Dawn’s second stop. The spacecraft previously spent a year at the asteroid Vesta.
