NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid belt is nearing completion

Washington, 8 September (IANS) After 11 years of breathtaking imagery and unprecedented space engineering, Dawn, NASA's space probe for the asteroid belt, is ending due to lack of fuel, United States. space agency said.

Launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Base in September 2007, Dawn was commissioned to study two of the three known protoplanets of the Vesta and Ceres asteroid belt, which account for 45% of the belt's mass. of main asteroids.

The spacecraft will probably lack the key to hydrazine supply – which keeps it oriented and in communication with the Earth – between September and October.

When that happens, Dawn will lose her ability to communicate with Earth, but will remain in silent orbit around Ceres for decades, NASA said in a statement on Thursday.

"This spacecraft not only unlocked scientific secrets about these two small but significant worlds, but it was also the first to visit and orbit bodies on two extraterrestrial destinations during its mission," said Lori Glaze, Acting Director of in Washington.

From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft swept Vesta, capturing images of craters, canyons and even mountains of this planet-like world.

Then, in 2015, Dawn's cameras spotted a cryovolcano and mysterious bright spots on Ceres, which scientists later discovered were salt deposits produced by the exposure of brackish liquid from the sea. interior of Ceres.

"Dawn showed us extraterrestrial worlds that, for two centuries, were just points of light among the stars, and he produced richly detailed intimate portraits and exotic and mysterious landscapes different from what we have never seen, "said Marc Rayman, Dawn's Mission Director and Chief Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

He continued to collect high-resolution images, gamma-ray spectra and neutron spectra, infrared spectra and gravimetric data at Ceres.

Nearly once a day, Dawn will fly over Ceres about 35 kilometers from its surface, or about three times the altitude of a jet plane, collecting valuable data up to that point. It spends the last hydrazine that powers the thrusters. orientation.

Engineers have designed the final orbit of Dawn, around Ceres, which has no atmosphere, to ensure that it will not fail for at least 20 years. years – and probably decades more, NASA said.

According to Rayman, Dawn is "a celestial monument inert to human creativity and ingenuity".

–IANS

rt / anp / vm