[FPSPACE] Dawn Journal for September 27, 2009

[LARRY KLAES]

Dawn Journal
 
September 27, 2009
 
Dear Dawnniversaries,
 
Dawn is celebrating the second anniversary of leaving its home planet by engaging in the same function it has performed most of its time in space: with the utmost patience, it is using its ion propulsion system to gradually modify its orbit around the Sun.
 
In its interplanetary travels, the spacecraft has thrust for a total of about 389 days, or 53% of the time (and about 0.000000008% of the time since the Big Bang). While for most spacecraft, firing a thruster to change course is a special event, it is Dawn’s wont. All this thrusting has cost the craft only 103 kilograms (228 pounds) of its supply of xenon propellant, which was 425 kilograms (937 pounds) on September 27, 2007.
 
The thrusting so far in the mission has achieved the equivalent of accelerating the probe by 2.62 kilometers per second (5870 miles per hour). As previous logs have described, because of the principles of motion for orbital flight, whether around the Sun or any other gravitating body, 
 
Dawn is not actually traveling this much faster than when it launched. But the effective change in speed remains a useful measure of the effect of any spacecraft’s propulsive work. Having accomplished only one-fifth of the thrust time planned for its entire mission, Dawn has already far exceeded the velocity change achieved by most spacecraft. (For a comparison with probes that enter orbit around Mars, refer to a previous log.) 
 
Since launch, our readers who have remained on or near Earth have completed 2 revolutions around the Sun, covering about 1.88 billion kilometers (1.17 billion miles). Orbiting farther from the Sun, and moving at a more leisurely pace, Dawn has traveled 1.57 billion kilometers (980 million miles). As it climbs away from the Sun to match its orbit to that of Vesta, it will continue to slow down to Vesta’s speed. Since Dawn’s launch, Vesta has traveled only 1.18 billion kilometers (730 million miles). 
 

Full article at:

 

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_9_27_09.asp

 

 
 		 	   		  
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