MEXICO: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to begin orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres the largest body in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter at the end of this week.
It marks the end of a two-and-a-half year journey since the probe departed Vesta — the asteroid belt’s second largest body.
The spacecraft’s arrival will be a gentle affair as it glides into orbit without using rockets to slow the craft down, says Dawn mission principal investigator Professor Chris Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Unlike other missions where everyone’s gathered in the control room timing down to the critical engine burn and then the whole room erupts in cheers when the engines light up on time, most of us will be at home sleeping as Dawn slips into orbit as the gravity of Ceres begins to dominate the spacecraft’s trajectory over that of the Sun,” he says.The probe will spend the next 15 months studying the 950-kilometre-wide asteroid.
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