NASA's Discovery Mission Dawn was launched in September 2007. Dawn will be the first to orbit two asteroids on a single voyage. The solar array for the Dawn mission will provide power under greatly varying illumination and temperature conditions. Dawn's ion propulsion system (IPS) will provide the spacecraft with enough thrust to reach Vesta and Ceres and orbit both. The demanding mission would be impossible without ion propulsion -- a mission only to the asteroid Vesta (and not including Ceres) would require a much more massive spacecraft and, a much larger launch vehicle.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Early Mission Power Assessment of the Dawn Solar Array



    Conference:

    IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference ; 2009 ; Philadelphia, PA, United States


    Publication date :

    2009-06-07


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Dawn Ceres Mission: Science Operations Performance

    Polanskey, Carol A. / Joy, Steven P. / Raymond, Carol A. et al. | AIAA | 2016


    Orbiting Vesta and Ceres - Dawn asteroid mission

    Taylor, Richard L.S. | Online Contents | 2002



    Optical Navigation for the Dawn Mission at Vesta

    Mastrodemos, N. / Rush, B. / Vaughan, A. et al. | NTRS | 2012


    Managing momentum on the dawn low thrust mission

    Smith, Brett A. / Vanelli, Charles A. / Swenka, Edward R. | IEEE | 2009