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Blog Archive

 

Dawn journal: scary-good ion propulsion

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2012/10/31 12:34 CDT

Dawn continues to raise its orbit en route to its 2015 date with Ceres. Also, Marc prepares his high-energy Halloween costume.

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Spring arrives to Vesta's north pole, as Dawn departs, plus a request for citizen scientists

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/09/11 11:08 CDT | 3 comments

Dawn's last images of Vesta peek into previously shadowy north polar territory. As the spacecraft leaves Vesta behind, its science team requests help from the public.

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Dawn journal: Back to interplanetary space

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2012/09/06 12:49 CDT

After more than a year in orbit, Dawn has left Vesta, beginning the spacecraft's journey to Ceres.

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Pretty picture: Vesta's crater Aelia in high resolution

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/08/13 02:59 CDT | 3 comments

I think my favorite features on Vesta are its streaky craters. Today's image release shows one of the streakiest: Aelia, a little crater on the flank of a larger one, near Vesta's equator.

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Dawn journal: The long, slow goodbye

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2012/07/26 12:40 CDT | 1 comments

Dawn has completed the final intensive phase of its exploration of Vesta, and it has now begun its gradual departure for Ceres.

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Dawn journal: seeing Vesta in a new light

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2012/07/06 02:33 CDT | 1 comments

Once again Dawn is diligently mapping Vesta, circling the ancient protoplanet about twice a day, observing the signatures of Vesta's tortured history.

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Cheat sheets for Vesta's craters and Dawn's Vesta timeline

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/19 01:38 CDT

I made myself a cheat sheet to many of Vesta's distinctive-looking craters, and also wrote down a list of the major dates in the timeline of Dawn's exploration of Vesta.

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More Dawn Vesta approach images: first color views

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/17 11:37 CST

�On June 30, Dawn stopped thrusting for a full Vestian day -- five hours and 20 minutes -- and just watched the asteroid rotate. But unlike the previous observations, they used all of Dawn's�color filters�to acquire the best-ever color photos of the lumpy world.

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Dawn images of Vesta! Released!! For everyone!!!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/14 10:57 CST

Some time in the last few days, the Dawn team�made public the first preliminary version�of the first release of their data from the Vesta phase of their mission.�

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Notes on Dawn at Vesta from the 2011 American Geophysical Union meeting

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/08 03:19 CST

A report on the press briefing and talks from the Fall 2011 American Geophyisical Union meeting about the data on Vesta collected so far by Dawn.

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Lovely pic of a recent crater on Vesta

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/11 08:28 CDT

Lovely pic of a recent crater on Vesta

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Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/03 11:55 CDT

Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting

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Video: Zooming around Vesta

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/16 08:44 CDT

Video: Zooming around Vesta

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Dawn's cryptic image release titles

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/14 04:44 CDT

Dawn's cryptic image release titles

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Vesta's wacky craters

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/16 09:26 CDT

Vesta's wacky craters

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Guest Post: Pablo Gutierrez-Marques: Vesta, a revelation

Posted by Pablo Gutierrez-Marques on 2011/08/09 12:19 CDT

Guest Post: Pablo Gutierrez-Marques: Vesta, a revelation

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Dawn Journal: Dawn has arrived!

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2011/07/26 11:55 CDT

After covering 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) on its own, after traveling for nearly four years through the lonely emptiness of interplanetary space, after being bound by the gravity only of the sun, Dawn is finally in orbit around Vesta.

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Vesta does a Hyperion impression

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/07/21 06:25 CDT

Maybe it's my own peculiar variant of pareidolia, but every time I see a new image of Vesta I'm reminded of some different other lumpy body in the solar system. In the image released just now by the Dawn team, taken from 10,500 kilometers away, I'm seeing Hyperion.

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Land ho!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/05/11 12:23 CDT

It's hard to convey just how excited I am to see Dawn's first image of asteroid Vesta.

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Dawn's Vesta phase timeline, a summary

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/05/03 01:18 CDT

Now that Dawn has finally begun its science mission at Vesta, I thought it'd be useful to go back through Marc Rayman's Dawn Journals to collect a summary of the plans for Vesta.

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