NASA · orbiter ended
Dawn
Dawn is the only spacecraft to have orbited two different worlds beyond Earth: the giant asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres.
- Launch
- 27 September 2007
- End of mission
- 31 October 2018
- Distance from Earth today
- 324.6 million km2.170 AU · light: 18 min 3 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 396.1 million km2.648 AU
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -203) every 10 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
About the mission
Dawn relied on ion engines, which give a gentle but very efficient push, to travel to the two largest bodies of the main asteroid belt. It spent more than a year orbiting Vesta, mapping a giant impact basin at its south pole and confirming that Vesta is the source of a common family of meteorites. In 2015 it settled into orbit around Ceres, where bright deposits in Occator crater turned out to be salts left by brine rising from below. When its attitude-control fuel ran out in 2018 the mission ended, and the silent spacecraft remains in orbit around Ceres.