Dawn Stays Longer at Ceres

Dawn is the probe that NASA sent out in September 2007 to study the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. So far it has covered investigations of the two largest objects in the asteroid belt, namely Vesta and Ceres. The $466 million space mission has a small set back when the probe went into safe mode.

It may be just a precautionary measure that the system on board Dawn has taken, but observers have made it clear that it will stay in its current orbit around the dwarf planet till the investigations being undertaken are completed. The safe mode action was initiated on June 30th when the space craft’s protective software detected a problem of some sort.

This resulted in Dawn shutting down its engines and while mission team members managed to get Dawn back in action after two days, they are not changing its orbit till they know for sure what caused the initial problem. As part of the mission the probe was to finish four orbits around the dwarf planet, each at a closer orbit.

Currently Dawn has finished two orbits and was about to start on the third one when the problem struck. The mission team had hoped to launch the probe into the next orbit in August this year. Despite the problems this science project has had a fair deal of success.