Asteroid Belt – Spaceflight Now

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft runs out of fuel in the asteroid belt

November 2, 2018

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft ran out of fuel Wednesday and stopped transmitting to Earth, ending an 11-year mission that explored the two largest objects in the asteroid belt and set several records in the annals of space history.

Q&A with Marc Rayman, chief engineer on NASA’s Dawn mission (members only)

November 1, 2018

Marc Rayman is chief engineer on NASA’s Dawn mission, which has run out of fuel after a 11-year interplanetary journey that explored Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists thrilled with closer views of Ceres’ famous salty crater

July 3, 2018

Fresh pictures from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have provided the sharpest glimpse yet of the bright salt deposits discovered inside a crater on Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

NASA’s Dawn mission gears up for close look at Ceres

October 20, 2017

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will remain at Ceres for the rest of its mission, heading closer to the asteroid belt’s largest resident than ever before to obtain new measurements of ice, salts and a tenuous intermittent atmosphere detected around the dwarf planet, the space agency announced Thursday.

Dawn mission managers await NASA decision on spacecraft’s future

June 17, 2017

The future of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, running low on hydrazine fuel and now flying around the dwarf planet Ceres without the help of internal pointing wheels, will be decided in the coming weeks by top space agency managers.

NASA publishes tantalizing close-ups of dwarf planet Ceres

January 12, 2016

Imagery from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, now in its closest orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres, reveal textures, landscapes and bright streaks possibly made of salts exposed by violent collisions with asteroids.

With widespread salts and ices, Ceres in a class of its own

December 10, 2015

The dwarf planet Ceres turns out to be a world with untold wonders, with vivid bright spots likely made of dried mineral salts and hazes apparently triggered by daytime heating, drawing a comparison to comets and strikingly differentiating it from neighboring bodies in the asteroid belt.

Dawn gets better look at bright spots on Ceres

September 9, 2015

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, nearly halfway through its exploration of the dwarf planet Ceres, has returned its best images yet of a mysterious grouping of bright spots inside a crater on the Texas-sized world, bolstering evidence that Ceres is geologically alive.