[FPSPACE] Dawn Journal entry for May 27, 2010

[LARRY KLAES]

Dawn Journal
 
May 27, 2010

Dear Multitudawnous Readers,
 
After more than 2.5 years of spaceflight, and more than 6 months in the asteroid belt, Dawn’s interplanetary journey continues smoothly. The mission remains on course and schedule for this expedition to the dawn of the solar system.
 
Our Dawn is not the first spacecraft to use this name, although it is traveling farther from home than any other Dawn. This month 2 more craft traveled into space carrying that appellation, at least when translated into English. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency sent Akatsuki to Earth’s neighbor Venus, and Russia’s Rassvet module was attached to the International Space Station in Earth orbit. The solar system is vast, however, and there is plenty of room for all such spacecraft. We send our best wishes for success to these other Dawns as they embark on their missions.
 
While our Dawn patiently and reliably thrusts with its ion propulsion system, gradually reshaping its path around the Sun to match orbits with the protoplanet Vesta, the human members of the team are very busy on distant Earth. Among their many activities is developing the sequences the robotic explorer will use when it begins studying that mysterious, alien world next year. We have seen recently what will occur during the “approach phase” and how Dawn will slip into orbit around Vesta. Now let’s have a preview of what the ship will do once it has reached the first science orbit, known as “survey orbit.” Engineers are developing those sequences now, for execution in August 2011.
 
In survey orbit, the probe will be about 2700 kilometers (1700 miles) above the surface. During the approach phase, navigators will measure the strength of Vesta’s gravitational tug on the spacecraft so they can compute the giant asteroid’s mass with much greater accuracy than astronomers have yet been able to determine it. (The mass is calculated now using observations of how Vesta perturbs the orbits of other asteroids and even of Mars.) That knowledge will allow them to refine the survey orbit altitude, and they may target it to be somewhat higher or lower, depending on whether Vesta is more massive or less massive than the current calculations show. The sequences for acquiring science data are being designed to accommodate a reasonable range of masses. 
 
Dawn will be in a near-polar orbit. Its trajectory will take it over the north pole (which will be in darkness, because it will be northern hemisphere winter at that time), then over the terminator (the boundary between the illuminated and unilluminated sides), down over the equator, over the south pole, and then across the terminator again to pass over Vesta’s night side. Such an orbit allows the spacecraft to have a view of virtually every part of the lit surface at some time. Each revolution in survey orbit will take 2.5 to 3 days to complete. While this may seem like a leisurely pace, the spacecraft will be busy the entire time.

 

The rest of the journal entry is here:

 

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_05_27_10.asp

 

 

 
 		 	   		  
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