Astronomy-Dawn Mission

Dawn mission

Dawn is a probe that was identified and introduced back in September 2007 by National
Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in Cape Canaveral. The main aims of launching
the dawn were to study the proto-planets of Vesta, Ceres, and Asteroid belt. Dawn has various
facts associated with it. One of it is that it is the only spacecraft to orbit two extra-terrestrials
bodies and also the first spacecraft to visit Ceres and Vesta, first to visit a planet considered to be
dwarf (Ceres). This research paper provides analysis of the Dawn mission.

Ceres is located in the asteroid belts between Jupiter and Mars, and it’s the closest dwarf
planet from the sun. It has a Diameter of 950 km, rotation period of 4.6 years, a temperature of
168k; it has no moon and a mass of 8.96*1020kilograms. Vesta is also a dwarf planet which is
the second massive body in the asteroid belt after the Ceres. It’s sometimes visible from the Earth
with naked eyes, and it was the first to be visited by the down probe. Vesta has a Diameter of

Surname 2
530 km, the mass of 2.67*1020 kilograms, and temperature of 85 to 255 k and a rotation period
of 5.342 hours.
The Dawn mission took approximately nine years. Dawn probe first entered Vesta and
the moved to Ceres. It came Vista in 16, July 2011 and did the analysis for 14 months before
leaving Vista to Ceres in 2012. Dawn arrived in Ceres orbit on 6th March 2015 and is suspected
to stay in orbit perpetually after it concludes its mission. The Dawn mission was inclusive, and it
involved a lot of analysis concerning the two dwarf planets.