By Marc Rayman
As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft makes its journey to its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes off for its next destination, this mosaic synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA
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Dear Dawnt Look Backs,

Its long and daring interplanetary journey continuing smoothly, Dawn is making good progress in gradually reshaping its orbit around the sun. Its uniquely efficient ion propulsion system is gently bringing it closer to its next destination, dwarf planet Ceres, and ever farther from its previous one, Vesta. Although the robotic explorer’s sights are set firmly ahead, let’s take one last look back at the fascinating alien world it unveiled during its 14 months in orbit there.

Vesta, the second most massive resident of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was discovered in 1807. For more than two centuries thereafter, the mysterious object appeared as little more than a fuzzy patch of light among the stars. The only one of the millions of main belt asteroids to be bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, Vesta beckoned, but its invitation was not answered until Dawn arrived in July 2011, nearly four years after it left distant Earth. The cosmic ambassador is the only spacecraft ever to have orbited an object in the main asteroid belt, and its ambitious mission would have been impossible without ion propulsion.

Dawn found a complex and exotic place, and it returned a fabulously rich collection of pictures and other measurements that will continue to be analyzed for many, many years. For now, we will simply touch on a very few of the many insights that already have been illuminated by the light of Dawn.

Scientists recognize Vesta as being more like a mini-planet than like the chips of rock most people think of as asteroids. The behemoth is 565 kilometers (351 miles) wide at the equator and has a surface area more than twice that of California (although it is populated by far fewer eccentrics, billionaires, and other colorful characters found in that state). Dawn’s measurements of the gravity field provide good evidence that Vesta separated into layers, much like Earth did as the planet was forming. Vesta’s dense core, composed principally of iron and nickel, may be 200 to 250 kilometers (125 to 150 miles) across. Surrounding that is the mantle, which in turn is covered by the veneer of the crust, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) thick. The once-molten core is now solid (in contrast to Earth’s, which remains hot enough to be liquid), but the differentiation into layers gives Vesta a key distinction from most asteroids. Because it was likely still in the process of accumulating material to become a full-sized planet when Jupiter’s immense gravity terminated its growth, scientists often refer to Vesta as a protoplanet.

Among the most prominent features of the alien landscape is a huge gouge out of the southern hemisphere so large that its presence was inferred from observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. Dawn found this gigantic crater to be even deeper and wider than expected, penetrating about 19 kilometers (12 miles) and spanning more than 500 kilometers (310 miles), or nearly 90 percent of the protoplanet’s equatorial diameter.

The yawning hole is now known as Rheasilvia, after the Vestal Virgin who not only was the mythical mother of Romulus and Remus, but also surely would have been astounded by the spectacular sights on Vesta as well as the spacecraft’s capability to point any user-defined body vector in a time-varying inertial direction defined by Chebyshev polynomials. As Dawn has brought Vesta into focus, cartographers have needed labels for the myriad features it has discovered. The International Astronomical Union names Vestan craters for Vestal Virgins and other famous Roman women; mountains, canyons, and other structures are named for towns and festivals associated with the Vestal Virgins.

Vesta dates to the dawn of the solar system, more than 4.5 billion years ago, and its age shows. Myriad craters tell the story of a timeworn surface that has been subjected to the rough and tumble conditions of life in the asteroid belt ever since. A virtual rain of space rocks has fallen upon it. While Rheasilvia records the most powerful punch, from an object as much as 50 kilometers (30 miles) across, there are at least seven craters, some quite ancient indeed, more than 150 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) in diameter. As the eons pass, craters degrade and become more difficult to discern, their crisp shapes eroded by subsequent impacts large and small.

The long history of cratering is particularly evident in the startling difference between the northern and southern hemispheres. The north is very densely cratered, but the south is not. Why? The titanic blow that carved out Rheasilvia is estimated to have occurred over one billion years ago. It excavated a tremendous volume of material. Much of it fell back to the surface, wiping it clean, so the cratering record had to start all over again. Recall that the crater itself is 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter, and scientists estimate that 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside the rim, the debris may have piled about 5 kilometers (3 miles) high. Even at greater distances, preexisting features would have been partially or completely erased by the thick accumulation. The effect did not reach to the northern hemisphere, however, so it retained the craters than had formed before this enormous impact.

Some of the rocks were ejected with so much energy that they broke free of Vesta’s gravitational grip, going into orbit around the sun. They then went their own way as they were yanked around by the gravitational forces of Jupiter and other bodies, and many of them eventually made it to the part of the solar system where your correspondent and some of his readers spend most of their time: Earth. When our planet’s gravity takes hold of one of these Vesta escapees, it pulls the rock into its atmosphere. Some lucky witness might even observe it as a meteor. Its blazing flight to the ground is not the end of its glory, however, for these rocks are prized by planetary geologists and other enthusiasts who want a souvenir from that impact.

Scientists now know that about 6 percent of the meteorites that have been found originated on Vesta. Six percent! One of every 16 meteorites! This is an astonishingly large fraction. Apart from Mars and the moon, Vesta is the only known source of specific meteorites. Although rocks from Vesta had to travel much farther, they far outnumber meteorites from these other two more familiar celestial bodies.

Combining laboratory studies of the numerous samples of Vesta with Dawn’s measurements at the source provides an extraordinary opportunity to gain insights into the nature of that remote world. Meteorites from Vesta are so common that they are often displayed in museums (occasionally even without the curators’ awareness of their special history) and can be obtained from many vendors. Anyone who has seen or held one surely must be moved by contemplating its origin, so distant in space and time, from well beyond Mars and long before animal or plant life arose on Earth.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal for more Vesta history

By Marc Rayman
As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft makes its journey to its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft at its next target, the protoplanet Ceres. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Dear Indawnspensable Readers,

Dawn is making good progress on the second segment of its cosmic travels. Following more than a year of arduous but sensationally productive and exciting work revealing the fascinating character of the giant protoplanet Vesta, it is now patiently pursuing its next target, the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres, which resides farther from the sun. For the second (and final) time in its interplanetary journey, however, Dawn is about to turn around, going closer to the sun rather than farther away.

In August 2008, we saw in detail how it could be that even as the bold explorer travels outward in the solar system from Earth, past Mars, to Vesta, and then on to Ceres, it could occasionally appear to reverse course temporarily. We present here a shorter explanation for those readers who did not memorize the log explaining this perplexing behavior (you know who you are, and we do as well, but your secret remains safe under the terms of our reader privacy agreement).

Dawn orbits the sun, as do Vesta, Ceres, the other residents of the main asteroid belt, and the planets. All orbits, whether of these objects around the star at the center of our solar system, artificial satellites or the moon in orbit around Earth, or even Dawn when it was in orbit around Vesta, are ellipses (like flattened circles). Earth, for example, orbits the sun at an average distance of 150 million kilometers (93.0 million miles), which astronomers call one astronomical unit (AU). During its year-long revolution, however, our planet comes in to 0.98 AU from the sun and goes out to 1.02 AU. Earthlings manage quite nicely with these small variations. (Note that the seasons are not caused by the changes in distance but instead are a result of the tilt of Earth’s axis and thus the differing angles at which the warming rays of the sun arrive during the year. If the sun’s distance were all that mattered, the northern and southern hemispheres would have the same seasons.) So, orbiting bodies move smoothly between a minimum and a maximum range from their gravitational masters rather than remaining at a constant distance.

When Dawn was in orbit around Vesta, it accompanied that world on its regular journey around the sun. The table last month showing the probe’s progress over the five years of its deep space trek reminds us that Vesta’s path brings it as close to the sun as 2.15 AU and takes it out to 2.57 AU.

If Dawn had remained in orbit around Vesta, it would have continued to follow the same elliptical course as its host in the asteroid belt. The pair would have reached their maximum solar distance next month and then would have fallen back to 2.15 AU in September 2014. While visiting Vesta was extremely gratifying, this explorer’s ambitions are greater. It broke free of Vesta’s grip, its sights set on a new and distant alien destination.

Now the spacecraft is in its own independent orbit around the sun, and the persistent but gentle pressure of its advanced ion propulsion system gradually reshapes that orbit. At any moment, the orbit is an ellipse, and an instant later, it is a slightly different ellipse, courtesy of the thrust. As Dawn departed from Vesta only last month, its orbit is not yet dramatically different, but over the course of the coming years, the effect of the thrusting will be to change the orbit tremendously. To reach Ceres in 2015, the ship will enlarge and tip its elliptical course to match the motion of the dwarf planet around the sun. (Some of the parameters characterizing each object’s orbit are shown here.)

Although the ship’s orbit is growing, it will reach the current high point on Nov. 1. It will then be 2.57 AU from the sun and, just as in 2008 (albeit at a smaller distance), it will begin moving closer, even as it continues to thrust.

If Dawn stopped thrusting on Nov. 1, its elliptical orbit would carry it down to 2.19 AU from the sun in September 2014. That’s a higher orbit than Vesta’s but still well below what it needs to be for the rendezvous with Ceres. Astute readers have already anticipated that the plan is not to stop thrusting but to continue reworking the trajectory, just as a ceramicist gradually achieves a desired shape to create the envisioned artistic result. The ongoing thrusting will raise the low point of the orbit, so if the ship follows the flight plan, it will descend only to 2.45 AU in October 2013 before sailing outward again. By May 2014 it will have risen to the same solar altitude as it is now. All the thrusting in the interim will have altered its course so much, however, that it will not turn around then; rather, it will continue ascending to keep its 2015 appointment with Ceres.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

On May 3, 2011, the mapping camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured its first image (left) of the giant asteroid Vesta. Only 5 pixels across, the image didn’t provide any new information about the asteroid, but it was important for navigation purposes and provided an exciting first look at Dawn’s eventual target. About five months later, Dawn snapped the much more detailed image on the right from only 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the surface of Vesta and has since provided unparalleled views of the mysterious world. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Dear Readers of all Dawnominations,

Far from Earth, on the opposite side of the sun, deep in the asteroid belt, Dawn is gradually spiraling around the giant protoplanet Vesta. Under the gentle pressure of its uniquely efficient ion propulsion system, the explorer is scaling the gravitational mountain from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO) to its second high-altitude mapping orbit (HAMO2).

Dawn spent nearly five months in LAMO, circling the rocky world at an average altitude of 210 kilometers (130 miles) as it acquired a fabulous bounty of pictures; visible, infrared, neutron, and gamma ray spectra; and measurements of the gravity field. As we saw last month, the probe was far more productive in each investigation than the ambitious team members had expected or had ever dared hope it would be. With that outstanding success behind it, it is looking ahead and up to its work in HAMO2, about 680 kilometers (420 miles) high.

Dawn is the first spacecraft to explore Vesta, the second most massive resident of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Indeed, this is the only craft ever to orbit a body in the asteroid belt. No other missions are currently on the books to visit this remote, exotic world, which is now appreciated to be more closely related to the terrestrial planets (including Earth) than to typical asteroids. And now Dawn is receding from it. On May 1, it began the slow ascent to its next observation orbit. It may well be decades before another robotic ambassador from Earth comes as close to Vesta as this bold traveler has.

Humankind’s first exploration of Vesta has been exceptionally rewarding. A simple measure of that can be seen with just two photographs. More than two centuries after its discovery, this giant asteroid was first glimpsed by the approaching spaceship from Earth on May 3, 2011. From a distance of 1.2 million kilometers (750 thousand miles), or more than three times the separation between Earth and the moon, Dawn’s mapping camera perceived Vesta as only five pixels across. Each pixel spanned more than 110 kilometers (70 miles), revealing nothing new compared to what astronomers’ most powerful telescopes had shown (but the image was of importance for navigation purposes). Nevertheless, at the time, it was tremendously exciting to obtain the first views of a distant, unfamiliar shore after a voyage of more than 2.6 billion kilometers (1.6 billion miles) on the interplanetary ocean. Sighting our first celestial port of call more than three and a half years after this cosmic adventure began was thrilling indeed. But now, with more than 25 thousand spectacular photos in hand from much smaller distances, it is even more gratifying to acknowledge that first picture as one of the worst ever taken of Vesta. The Image of the Day from one year later
was acquired in October 2011 from 1,700 times closer; and most of the images have been obtained from LAMO, about 5,700 times nearer than that first one. Dawn has rapidly transformed Vesta from a mere fleck among the stars into a fascinating, complex and splendidly detailed world.

Keeping the remote vessel on the planned spiraling course from one mapping orbit to another presents the crew with a set of formidable challenges, but this team has accomplished the maneuvers to successively reach survey orbit, the first high-altitude mapping orbit (HAMO1) and LAMO. The current orbital transfer is complex and demanding, but it is proceeding very well. Controllers update the flight profile every few days to ensure the probe stays close to the carefully designed trajectory to HAMO2. To gain a sense of the progress, go here for your correspondent’s atypically succinct weekly summaries of the spiral status.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn’s framing cameras. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
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Dear Dawnright Spectacular Readers,

Dawn is wrapping up a spectacularly rewarding phase of its mission of exploration. Since descending to its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO) in December, the stalwart probe has circled Vesta about 800 times and collected a truly outstanding trove of precious observations of the protoplanet. Having far exceeded the plans, expectations, and even hopes for what it would accomplish when LAMO began, the ambitious explorer is now ready to begin its ascent. On May 1, atop its familiar blue-green pillar of xenon ions, the craft will embark upon the six-week spiral to its second high-altitude mapping orbit.

When the intricate plans for Dawn’s one-year orbital residence at Vesta were developed, LAMO was to be 70 days, longer than any other phase. Because of the many daunting challenges of exploring an uncharted, alien world in the forbidding depths of the asteroid belt so far from home, mission planners could not be confident of staying on a rigid schedule, and yet they wanted to make the most of the precious time at the giant asteroid. They set aside 40 days (with no committed activities) to use as needed in overcoming problems during the unique approach and entry into orbit as well as the intensive observation campaigns in survey orbit and the first high-altitude mapping orbit plus the complex spiral flights from each science orbit to the next. To no one’s surprise, unexpected problems did indeed arise on occasion, and yet in every case, the dedicated professionalism and expertise of the team (occasionally augmented with cortisol, caffeine, and carbohydrates) allowed the expedition to remain on track without needing to draw on that reserve. To everyone’s surprise and great delight, by the beginning of LAMO on December 12, the entirety of the 40 days remained available. Therefore, all of it was used to extend the time the spacecraft would spend at low altitude studying the fascinating world beneath it.

Dawn’s mission at Vesta, exciting and successful though it is, is not the craft’s sole objective. Thanks to the extraordinary capability of its ion propulsion system, this is the first vessel ever planned to orbit two extraterrestrial destinations. After it completes its scrutiny of the behemoth it now orbits, the second most massive resident of the main asteroid belt, Dawn will set sail for dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Since 2009, the interplanetary itinerary has included breaking out of Vesta orbit in July 2012 in order to arrive at Ceres on schedule in February 2015. Taking advantage of additional information they have gained on the spacecraft’s generation and consumption of electrical power, the performance of the ion propulsion system, and other technical issues, engineers have refined their analyses for how long the journey through the asteroid belt to Ceres will take. Their latest assessment is that they can shave 40 days off the previous plan, once again demonstrating the valuable flexibility of ion propulsion, and that translates into being able to stay that much longer at the current celestial residence. (This extension is different from the 40 days described above, because that was designed to ensure Dawn could complete its studies and still leave on schedule in July. For this new extension, the departure date is being changed.) Even though a larger operations team is required at Vesta than during the cruise to Ceres, the Dawn project has the wherewithal to cover the cost. Because operations at Vesta have been so smooth, no new funds from NASA are needed; rather, the project can use the money it had held in reserve in case of problems. In this new schedule, Dawn will gently free itself of Vesta’s gravitational hold on August 26.

Most of the bonus time has been devoted to extending LAMO by a month, allowing the already richly productive investigations there to be even better. (Future logs will describe how the rest of the additional time at Vesta will be spent.) With all sensors fully operational, the robotic explorer has been making the best possible use of its precious time at Vesta, revealing more and more thrilling details of an exotic world deep in the asteroid belt.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a young crater on Vesta that is 9 miles (15 kilometers) in diameter. Layering is visible in the crater walls, as are large boulders that were thrown out in the material ejected from the impact. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA |
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Dear Dawnscoverers,

On March 29, Vesta spent the 205th anniversary of its discovery by treating Dawn to more spectacular vistas, as it does so often these days. When Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers first spotted Vesta, he could hardly have imagined that the power of the noble human spirit for adventure and the insatiable hunger for knowledge would propel a ship from Earth to that mysterious point of light among the stars. And yet today our spacecraft is conducting a detailed and richly rewarding exploration of the world that Olbers found.

Dawn is continuing its intensive low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO) campaign, scrutinizing the protoplanet 210 kilometers (130 miles) beneath it with all instruments. The primary objectives of the craft’s work here are to measure the atomic composition and the interior distribution of mass in this geologically complex world. In addition, this low orbit provides the best vantage point for high resolution pictures and visible and infrared spectra to reveal the nature of the minerals on the surface.

Ever since it left its home planet behind in September 2007, the robotic adventurer has pursued its own independent course through the solar system. As Earth and its orbiting retinue (including the moon and many artificial satellites) followed their repetitive annual loop around the sun, Dawn used its ion propulsion system to spiral outward to rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011. When the gigantic asteroid’s gravity gently took hold of the visiting craft, the two began traveling together around the sun, taking the same route Vesta has since long before humans gazed in wonder at the nighttime sky.

As we have discussed before, the speed of an object in orbit, whether around Earth, the sun, the Milky Way (either my cat or the galaxy of the same name) or anything else, decreases as its orbital altitude increases. Farther from the sun than Earth is, and hence bound to it by a weaker gravitational grip, Vesta moves at a more leisurely pace, taking more than 3.6 years per revolution. When Dawn travels to the more remote Ceres, it will orbit the sun even more slowly, eventually matching Ceres’ rate of 4.6 years for each loop.

Just as the hour hand and minute hand of a clock occasionally are near each other and at other times are on opposite sides of the clock face, Earth and Dawn sometimes are relatively close and other times are much farther apart. Now their orbits are taking them to opposite sides of the sun, and the distance is staggering. They have been on opposite sides of the sun twice before (albeit not as far apart as this time), in November 2008 and November 2010. We used both occasions to explain more about the nature of the alignment as well as to contemplate the profundity of such grand adventures.

On April 18, Dawn will attain its greatest separation yet from Earth, nearly 520 million kilometers (323 million miles) or more than 3.47 astronomical units (AU). Well beyond Mars, fewer than a dozen spacecraft have ever operated so far from Earth. Those interested in the history of space exploration (such as your correspondent) will enumerate them, but what should be more rewarding is marveling at the extent of humanity’s reach. At this extraordinary range, Dawn will be nearly 1,400 times farther than the average distance to the moon (and 1,300 times farther than the greatest distance attained by Apollo astronauts 42 years ago). The deep-space ship will be well over one million times farther from Earth than the International Space Station and Tiangong-1.

Vesta does not orbit the sun in the same plane that Earth does. Indeed, a significant part of the challenge in matching Dawn’s orbit to Vesta’s was tipping the plane of its orbit from Earth’s, where it began its journey, to Vesta’s, where it is now. As a result, when they are on opposite sides of the sun this time, Dawn will not appear to go directly behind the sun but rather will pass a little south of it. In addition, because the orbits are not perfectly circular, the greatest separation does not quite coincide with the time that Dawn and the sun appear to be most closely aligned. The angular separation will be at its minimum of less than five degrees (about 10 times the angular size of the sun itself) on April 9, but the sun and Dawn appear to be within ten degrees of each other from March 23 until April 27. For our human readers, that small angle is comparable to the width of your palm at arm’s length, providing a handy way to find the approximate position of the spacecraft in the sky. Earth’s robotic ambassador to the cosmos began east of the salient celestial signpost and progresses slowly to the west over the course of those five weeks. Readers are encouraged to step outside and join your correspondent in raising a saluting hand to the sun, Dawn, and what we jointly accomplish in our efforts to gain a perspective on our place in the universe.

For those awestruck observers who lack the requisite superhuman visual acuity to discern the faraway spacecraft amidst the dazzling light of the sun, this alignment provides a convenient occasion to reflect once again upon missions deep into space. Formed at the dawn of the solar system, Vesta, arguably the smallest of the terrestrial planets, has waited mostly in patient inconspicuousness for a visit from the largest terrestrial planet. For the entire history of life on Earth, the inhabitants remained confined to the world on which they have lived. Yet finally, one of the millions upon millions of species, inspired by the majesty of the universe, applied its extraordinary talents and collective knowledge to overcome the limitations of planetary life and strove to venture outward. Dawn is the product of creatures fortunate enough to be able to combine their powerful curiosity about the workings of the cosmos with their impressive abilities to explore, investigate and ultimately understand. While its builders remain in the vicinity of the planet upon which they evolved, their emissary now is passing on the far side of the sun! This is the same sun that is more than 100 times the diameter of Earth and a third of a million times its mass. This is the same sun that has been the unchallenged master of our solar system for more than 4.5 billion years. This is the same sun that has shone down on Earth throughout that time and has been the ultimate source of so much of the heat, light and other energy upon which the planet’s residents have been so dependent. This is the same sun that has so influenced human expression in art, literature, mythology and religion for uncounted millennia. This is the same sun that has motivated scientific studies for centuries. This is the same sun that is our signpost in the Milky Way galaxy. And humans have a spacecraft on the far side of it. We may be humbled by our own insignificance in the universe, yet we still undertake the most valiant adventures in our attempts to comprehend its majesty.

Dawn is 210 kilometers (130 miles) from Vesta. It is also 3.45 AU (516 million kilometers or 321 million miles) from Earth, or 1,290 times as far as the moon and 3.45 times as far as the sun today. Radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed of light, take 57 minutes to make the round trip.

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn’s framing cameras. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
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Dear Ups and Dawns,

Dawn is continuing its exploits at Vesta, performing detailed studies of the colossal asteroid from its low altitude mapping orbit (LAMO). The robotic ambassador is operating extremely well on behalf of the creatures it represents on a distant planet. On this second intercalary day of its ambitious adventure, the spacecraft is doing exactly what it was designed to do: exploring a previously uncharted alien world.

Although we usually describe LAMO as being at an average altitude of 210 kilometers (130 miles), that does not mean it is at a constant altitude. As we saw on the fourth anniversary of Dawn’s departure from Earth, there are two reasons the spacecraft’s height changes. One is that the elevation of the surface itself changes, so if the probe flew in a perfect circle around Vesta, its altitude would vary according to the topography. Like the planet from which Dawn embarked upon its deep space journey in 2007 (and even some of the residents there), Vesta is broadest near its equator, and that is where the ground generally reaches its greatest distance from the center. In addition, the ancient surface, battered over billions of years in the rough and tumble of the asteroid belt, displays remarkable variations in shape. The giant Rheasilvia basin is a scar from an extraordinary impact that excavated a region encompassing the south pole more than 500 kilometers (over 300 miles) in diameter. This immense gouge has left that part of Vesta at a much lower elevation than elsewhere. In the center of the enormous depression is the second tallest mountain known in the solar system, soaring to well over twice the height of Mt. Everest. The vertical range from the highest locations near the equator to the bottoms of the deepest craters within Rheasilvia is more than 60 kilometers (37 miles). So as Dawn loops around in just over four hours, the surface underneath it rises and falls dramatically.

The second reason is that the orbit itself is not exactly a circle. Let’s ignore for a moment the effect of the topography and focus solely on the shape of the craft’s path around Vesta. As Vesta rotates and Dawn revolves, the gravitational forces acting on the orbiter are always changing because of the irregular distribution of material inside the geologically complex protoplanet. This effect occurred at the higher altitudes as well, but it was much less pronounced there. Now that the adventurer is deep in the gravity field, the peaks and valleys of its own motion are magnified.

Navigators were very careful in choosing the parameters for LAMO, recognizing that the orbital waters were turbulent. Nevertheless, their mapping of the gravitational currents proved quite accurate, and the spacecraft has followed the planned course quite well. The lengthy and relatively technical discussions in the two previous logs described why the ship drifts off a little, but operators occasionally nudge it back with the ion propulsion system.

Orbits usually are best described by ellipses, like flattened circles. Now Vesta’s bumpy gravity field does not allow perfectly smooth, regular orbits at low altitude. Moreover, the variations in the strength of the gravitational attraction transform the orbits. Sometimes, the difference between the high point of a loop and the low point is less than 16 kilometers (10 miles). As the changing forces reshape the orbit, the ellipse gets more exaggerated, with the low points going lower and the high points going higher. The differences within one revolution grow to be more than 75 kilometers (47 miles). Thanks to the ingenious design of the orbital trajectory however, those same forces then will gradually attenuate the profile, causing it to become more round again. This pattern repeats every 11.5 days in LAMO. It is almost as if the orbit breathes slowly, its envelope expanding and contracting.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

The south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta, as imaged by the framing camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in September 2011. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA |
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Dear Asdawnished Readers,

Dawn is scrutinizing Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), circling the rocky world five and a half times a day. The spacecraft is healthy and continuing its intensive campaign to reveal the astonishing nature of this body in the mysterious depths of the main asteroid belt.

Since the last log, the robotic explorer has devoted most of its time to its two primary scientific objectives in this phase of the mission. With its gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND), it has been patiently measuring Vesta’s very faint nuclear emanations. These signals reveal the atomic constituents of the material near the surface. Dawn also broadcasts a radio beacon with which navigators on distant Earth can track its orbital motion with exquisite accuracy. That allows them to measure Vesta’s gravity field and thereby infer the interior structure of this complex world. In addition to these top priorities, the spacecraft is using its camera and its visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) to obtain more detailed views than they could in the higher orbits.

As we have delved into these activities in detail in past logs, let’s consider here some more aspects of controlling this extremely remote probe as it peers down at the exotic colossus 210 kilometers (130 miles) beneath it.

Well, the first aspect that is worth noting is that it is incredibly cool! Continuing to bring this fascinating extraterrestrial orb into sharper focus is thrilling, and everyone who is moved by humankind’s bold efforts to reach into the cosmos shares in the experience. As a reminder, you can see the extraordinary sights Dawn has by going here for a new image every weekday, each revealing another intriguing aspect of the diverse landscape.

The data sent back are providing exciting and important new insights into Vesta, and those findings will continue to be announced in press releases. Therefore, we will turn our attention to a second aspect of operating in LAMO. Last month, we saw that various forces contribute to Dawn moving slightly off its planned orbital path. (That material may be worth reviewing, either to enhance appreciation of what follows or as an efficacious soporific, should the need for one ever arise.) Now let’s investigate some of the consequences. This will involve a few more technical points than most logs, but each will be explained, and together they will help illustrate one of the multitudinous complexities that must be overcome to make such a grand adventure successful.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal

By Marc Rayman

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft investigates its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer, shares a monthly update on the mission’s progress.

This 3-D video incorporates images from the framing camera instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from July to August 2011. The images were obtained as Dawn approached Vesta and circled the giant asteroid during the mission’s survey orbit phase. Survey orbit took place at an altitude of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). To view this video in 3-D use red-green, or red-blue, glasses (left eye: red; right eye: green/blue). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
› See video

Dear Dawnward Spirals,

Continuing its ambitious campaign of exploration deep in the asteroid belt, Dawn has spent most of the past month spiraling ever closer to Vesta. Fresh from the phenomenal success of mapping the alien world in detail in October, the spacecraft and its human team members are engaged in one of the most complicated parts of the mission. The reward will be the capability to scrutinize this fascinating protoplanet further.

Thanks to the extraordinary performance of its ion propulsion system, Dawn can maneuver to different orbits that are best suited for conducting each of its scientific observations. The probe is now headed for its low altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), where the focus of its investigations will be on making a census of the atomic constituents with its gamma ray and neutron sensors and on mapping the gravity field in order to determine the interior structure of this protoplanet.

As secondary objectives, Dawn will acquire more images with its camera and more spectra with its visible and infrared mapping spectrometer. As we will see in a future log, these measurements will receive a smaller share of the resources than the high priority studies. The spectacular pictures obtained already will keep scientists happy for years, and you can continue to share in the experience of marveling at the astonishing discoveries by seeing some of the best views here, including scenes captured during the spiral to LAMO.

Planning the low altitude mapping orbit around massive Vesta, with its complicated gravity field, required a great deal of sophisticated analysis. Before Dawn arrived, mission designers studied a range of possible gravitational characteristics and honed the methods they would use for plotting the actual orbit once the details of the protoplanet’s properties were ascertained. In the meantime, the team used a tentative orbit at an altitude over the equator of 180 kilometers (110 miles). As explained in a previous log, the altitude varies both because the orbit is not perfectly circular and because Vesta displays such exceptional topography. The highest elevations turn out to be at the equator, and the average altitude of that orbit would be 200 kilometers (125 miles).

Now that navigators have measured Vesta’s gravity, they have the knowledge to refine the design for LAMO, and they decided to raise it by 10 kilometers (6 miles). The target then is an average altitude of 210 kilometers (130 miles). But there is more to the specification of the orbit than simply its height. To meet all of the scientific objectives, the orientation of this orbit needs to be different from the orientation of the previous orbits, the high altitude mapping orbit (HAMO) and survey orbit.

› Continue reading Marc Rayman’s Dawn Journal