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The mission's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formation. Ceres and Vesta have many contrasting characteristics that are thought to have resulted from them forming in two different regions of the early solar system; Ceres is theorized to have to have experienced a "cool and wet" formation that may have left it with subsurface water, and Vesta is theorized to have experienced a "hot and dry" formation that resulted in a differentiated interior and surface vulcanism.
Dawn will be launched on a Delta 7925H rocket. To cruise from Earth to its targets it will use three DS1 heritage Xenon ion thrusters (firing only one at a time) to take it in a long outward spiral. The planned chronology is:
An extended mission in which Dawn explores other asteroids after Ceres is also possible.
The Dawn mission team is led by UCLA space scientist Christopher T. Russell . Orbital Sciences Corporation will construct the spacecraft, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will provide the ion engines and management of the overall flight system development. The German Aerospace Center will provide the framing camera, and the Institute for Space Astrophysics in Rome will provide the mapping spectrometer. A laser altimeterAn altimeter is an active instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. For example, a laser altimeter can measure height from a spacecraft above an ice-sheet. That measurement, coupled with radial orbit knowledge, will enable will be provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight CenterNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center located in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a major space science laboratory. It was named in memory of Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocket propulsion, and was established on May 1, 1959. External link NASA facilities., a gamma rayThis article is about electromagnatic radiation. For the power metal band, see Gamma Ray (band Gamma rays (often denoted by the Greek letter gamma, γ) are an energetic form of electromagnetic radiation (see Electromagnetic spectrum) produced by radi spectrometer from the DOE Los Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos National Laboratory (LANL is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed by the University of California, located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Laboratory is one of the largest multidisciplinary institutions in the, and a magnetometerA Magnetometer is a scientific instrument used to measure the strength of magnetic fields. Earth's magnetism varies from place to place and differences in the Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) can be caused by a couple of things: #The differing n will be provided by UCLA.