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[personal profile] mmcirvin
By the way, Dawn is supposed to actually enter Vesta orbit at 1 AM EST tonight. It will be less of an event than these things usually are, because of Dawn's ion drive; the spacecraft has been gradually closing in on the asteroid for weeks, and there won't be any big orbital-insertion burn.

The science phase of the mission officially begins in August; I'm looking forward to seeing more frequent pictures. So far, the images taken have been intermittent shots taken for navigation purposes, and the Dawn team has taken a little more time to release them than we're used to from missions like Cassini; I think they got some more on Wednesday that they haven't released yet.

It will spend a year in orbit around Vesta before leaving for Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

May 2025

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