Dawn Arrives at Vesta

It has been a long, 1.7 billion-mile journey into the asteroid belt for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, launched on September 26, 2007. The spacecraft finally arrived at its first stop at asteroid Vesta on July 16, 2011.

Dawn entered orbit around Vesta and wasted no time getting its bearings by taking the most detailed photographs of the asteroid yet seen, including an image of its dark side (below).

Additionally, Dawn is paying a visit to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The spacecraft will orbit around Vesta for a year before proceeding on to arrive at Ceres in February of 2015.

Dawn’s travels through the asteroid belt are all in hopes of finding out more about the early universe.

The dark side of asteroid Vesta (Image: NASA)

Curiosity: the Next Mars Rover

The Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is the next NASA rover destined for the Red Planet. About the size of a car, the rover is slated for launch at the end of this year and will arrive at Mars in August of 2012.

Its destination, announced last week, is Gale Crater, which is about 96 miles in diameter. Curiosity will land at the base of a three-mile-high mountain, performing a first-ever precision landing using a new landing system.

The rover will be studying rocks in order to investigate more about the possibility for microbial life sometime in Mars’ past. Curiosity’s payload of scientific instruments is about 10 times more massive than the previous Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity will spend at least one Martian year, the equivalent of about two Earth years, exploring.

By the way, Spirit’s operations officially ended in March after the rover has been out of contact for over a year. Meanwhile, Opportunity is still busily roving seven years after landing on Mars, long exceeding its anticipated lifetime.

Download the Curiosity fact sheet from NASA (.pdf file).

Juno Ready for Jupiter

The Juno spacecraft is now poised atop its launch vehicle, the powerful Atlas V rocket, ready to depart on the morning of August 5; the launch window ends August 26.

This latest NASA endeavor is set to arrive at the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, in July of 2016 and will orbit the gas giant 33 times before it completes its mission by October of 2017.

The purpose of Juno is to investigate what lies underneath the gas giant’s swirling atmosphere at its core. Juno will also study Jupiter’s magnetosphere and auroras in hopes of understanding more about the planet’s origins and evolution.

Hubble Discovers Pluto’s Fourth Moon

The Hubble Space Telescope recently uncovered a tiny addition to icy Pluto’s system: a new moon, for the time being named P4.

Pluto, which was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, already has three other satellites: Charon, Nix, and Hydra. The latest addition is Pluto’s smallest companion with a diameter between eight and 21 miles.

Charon was Pluto’s first moon, discovered in 1978, while Nix and Hydra were found in 2005.

P4 has the third outermost orbit around Pluto, located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra.

Hubble first saw this fourth moon on June 28, and the observation was confirmed when new pictures were taken early in July.

P4 had been overlooked until now because earlier pictures of Pluto had short exposures. Longer exposures finally revealed that P4 was more than just a smudge.

Amazingly, the Hubble Telescope was located three billion miles away from Pluto when it took pictures of the satellite system.

The discovery was made as Hubble helps prepare the New Horizons spacecraft for its visit to Pluto in 2015. The goal of New Horizons, launched in 2006, is to travel closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft and learn more about the outer edges of our solar system.

Hubble had previously proved “invaluable to planning for New Horizons’ close encounter,” according to a NASA news release, when it mapped the surface of Pluto.

Now, as if NASA was not already looking forward to a closer look at Pluto, this new moon presents yet another mystery about the icy planet that warrants further investigation.

Below are Hubble's pictures confirming the existence of Pluto's new moon, P4.



The Return of Space Shuttle Atlantis

Space shuttle Atlantis, the final mission of the program, returned home to the Kennedy Space Center today. Below is a photograph from NASA.

Caption from NASA:
"This unprecedented view of the space shuttle Atlantis, appearing like a bean sprout against clouds and city lights, on its way home, was photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background."