Rabu, 13 Juli 2011

The Dawn Is Close Early Long Stay In Giant Asteroid


Pasadena, Calif. - NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on track to begin the first extended visit to a large asteroid. The Mission expects to go into orbit around Vesta, July 16 and start collecting scientific data in early August. Vesta reside in the main asteroid belt, and is believed to be the source of many meteorites that fall to the ground.

"The spacecraft is right on target," said Robert Mase, Project Director Dawn Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion in Pasadena, Calif. "We look forward to exploring this unknown world on the eve of one year stay in orbit of Vesta. "

After traveling for almost four years and 1.7 billion miles (2.7 billion kilometers), the Dawn of about 96,000 miles (15.500 million) away from Vesta. When prisoners of its orbit Vesta Dawn July 16, there will be about 9900 miles (16,000 km) between them. When Orbit is reached, they will be about 117 million miles (188 million kilometers) away from Earth.

After dawn in the orbit of Vesta, the engineers will need several days to determine the exact time of capture. Unlike other applications where a dramatic, nail-biting drive burn resulting in the insertion orbit around a planet, Dawn spent her calm ion propulsion system that subtly shape his path for years to match the orbit of Vesta around the sun.

The dawn Framing camera images, navigation, seems slow to Vesta. They also show Vesta rotates 65 degrees field of view. The images are about twice as strong as the best pictures of Vesta Hubble Space Telescope from NASA, but the details of the surface of the Dawn is still a mystery.
"Navigating photos from a camera framing Dawn gave us great tips of Vesta, but we look forward to the heart of operations of Vesta when we start officially collecting scientific data," said Christopher Russell, principal investigator Dawn at UCLA. "We can not wait for dawn to peel the layers of time and reveal the early history of our solar system."

Dawn has three instruments all work and seems to be properly calibrated. Mapping spectrometer visible and infrared, for example, is starting to get images of Vesta, which is larger than a few pixels in size. During the initial reconnaissance orbit, about 1700 miles (2700 km), the probe will get a broad picture of Vesta with color images and data in different wavelengths of reflected light. The probe is moving in an orbit mapping at high altitude, about 420 miles (680 km) above the surface to systematically map the parts of Vesta's surface illuminated by the sun, collect stereo images to see the high topographic and downs, get high-resolution data to map rocks to the surface and learn more about the thermal properties of Vestas.

At dawn, then moves closer to a low-altitude mapping orbit about 120 miles (200 km) above. The primary scientific objectives of this rotation is detected by-products of cosmic rays hit the surface, and to help researchers find a variety of atoms there, and probe the internal structure of the proto-planet. As dawn spirals of Vesta, it will stop once the high-altitude mapping orbit. As the angle of the sun's surface has progressed, the researchers were able to see previously hidden in off-road, at the same time to obtain the views of different surface characteristics.

"We've done our year is full of Vesta observations to help scientists unravel the mysteries of Vesta," said Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy principal investigator at JPL. Vesta is considered a protoplanet, or organization that has never been to become a full-fledged planet.

Dawn was launched in September 2007. After a year of Vesta, the spacecraft will start its second destination Ceres dwarf planet in July 2012. Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for the Science Branch of NASA's mission to Washington. Dawn is a project of Discovery program of the Directorate managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama

UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn made a science. Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics are part of the team. JPL is managed by NASA at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about Dawn, visit: here      

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2 komentar:

  1. nice bro..stelah ditranslate,nambah ilmu nih saya.jgn lupa jga komen balik di blogku ya

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