ever fly-by of dwarf planet Pluto and its system of moons
by the New Horizons spacecraft (NASA/Johns Hopkins
University APL/South-West Research Institute) on July 14th,
which should shed more light on the evolution of the
frigid, outer regions of the solar system, just beyond the
realm of the major planets. The revelation of Triton’s active surface during the Voyager 2 fly-by of the Neptune
system in 1989 and recent Earth-based and HST observations of Pluto lead us to expect an exciting encounter.
Before that, however, on 6th March, the Dawn spacecraft will enter the final phase of its incredible odyssey through the main-asteroid belt when it enters orbit
around dwarf planet Ceres, ‘easing into (its) gravitational
embrace’, as Dr. Marc Rayman, the project’s Chief Engineer and Mission Director at JPL, poetically says in his engaging and regularly updated ‘Dawn Journal’ at http://
dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal.asp . The probe will
become a permanent satellite of the dwarf planet, having already spent 14 months orbiting and studying asteroid 4 Vesta, which makes Dawn unique so far in orbiting
two separate bodies beyond the Earth-Moon system. Its
primary mission of observing Ceres in detail is planned
to last until summer 2016.
Mission origins and development
Dawn is targeted specifically at investigating the
main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is one
of