The Dawn spacecraft conducted two extended missions at Ceres following the completion of the primary mission in June 2016. The final orbit of the second extended mission was designed to have a 35-km periapsis altitude for 10x higher resolution science. The mission ended in this orbit when the spacecraft ran out of attitude control propellant. In this paper, we describe the final orbit and discuss the challenges of flying this low at Ceres. We also include our stability analysis showing the spacecraft will remain in orbit for more than 20 years, as stipulated by the planetary protection requirements.


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    Title :

    Stability and targeting in Dawn's final orbit


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2019-01-13


    Type of media :

    Preprint


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English



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