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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on way to enter asteroid’s orbit: JPL

14 July 2011 21:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will begin a prolonged encounter with the asteroid Vesta, making the mission the first to enter orbit around a main-belt asteroid, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said on Thursday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Dawn will study Vesta for one year to collect data that will help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system’s history, said JPL in Pasadena, California.

The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Engineers expect the spacecraft to be captured into orbit at approximately 10 p.m. PDT Friday, July 15 (1 a.m. EDT Saturday, July 16).

When Vesta captures Dawn into its orbit, engineers estimate there will be approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) between them. At that point, the spacecraft and asteroid will be approximately 117 million miles (188 million kilometers) from Earth.

"It has taken nearly four years to get to this point," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager at JPL. "Our latest tests and check-outs show that Dawn is right on target and performing normally."

Engineers have been subtly shaping Dawn’s trajectory for years to match Vesta’s orbit around the sun, according to JPL.

Launched in September 2007, Dawn will depart for its second destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, in July 2012. The spacecraft will be the first to orbit two solar system destinations beyond Earth.

Dawn’s mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.