After more than eleven years in space, NASA’s spacecraft Dawn has ceased to communicate. The space probe’s hydrazine fuel is depeleted; the operational mission has come to an end.
Interview with Dawn’s Framing Camera Lead Investigator Dr. Andreas Nathues from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research on the mission’s imminent end.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned first images from its lowest orbit around dwarf planet Ceres. They show parts of Occator Crater as detailed as never before.
All images taken by the scientific camera system OSIRIS during Rosetta’s twelve-year mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are now publicly available.
New research group at MPS: Jessica Agarwal investigates the activity of comets and asteroids in the framework of a Starting Grant of the European Research Council.
Comets and asteroids, remnants of planet formation, have been subject to various processes in the 4.5 billion years since their formation. Studying their activity leads us to better understand how these bodies evolve with time, and what the properties of their surfaces and sub-surface layers are.
Dawn was NASA's mission to the asteroid belt. In 2011 the spacecraft reached the asteroid Vesta and accompanied it for more than a year. Dawn reached its second destination (dwarf planet Ceres) in 2015 where the mission ended in November 2018.
Rosetta was ESA's mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta consisted of an orbiter and a lander called Philae. Rosetta reached the comet in 2014. In November 2014, Philae successfully landed on the comet's surface.
