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Settling in at Ceres

Apr 20, 2015
This frame from an animated sequence of images shows northern terrain on the sunlit side of dwarf planet Ceres as seen by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on April 14 and 15, 2015.

Click here for animation of PIA19064
Click on the image for the animation

This animated sequence of images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows northern terrain on the sunlit side of dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn took these images on April 14 and 15 from a vantage point 14,000 miles (22,000 kilometers) above Ceres' northern hemisphere. The spacecraft was settling into its first circular orbit, called RC3 (for "rotation characterization 3"), which it will begin on April 23.

The bright feature called "spot 5" by the Dawn science team -- actually two bright spots close together -- rotates into view at right in the last few frames.

Dawn has now finished delivering the images that have helped mission planners maneuver the spacecraft to its first science orbit and prepare for subsequent observations.

Image scale on Ceres is about 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) per pixel, compared to 1.9 miles (3.1 kilometers) per pixel in the optical navigation images taken on April 10 (see PIA19317). The sun-Ceres-spacecraft angle, or phase angle is 91 degrees here, compared to 131 degrees in the previous sequence.

A processed still image from this sequence is also available.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

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Mission
  • Dawn
Target
  • Ceres
Spacecraft
  • Dawn
Instrument
  • Framing Camera
Credit
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Keep Exploring

Highlighting Bright Areas of Ceres' Occator Crater

Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Pits and Domes in Occator Crater, Ceres

Close-up of Occator Crater

Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Impact Melt Deposits at Occator Crater, Ceres

Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Deposits at Occator Crater, Ceres

Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Southeast Floor and Rim of Occator Crater, Ceres

View of Ceres' Limb

Ezinu Crater

Stars on Occator's Floor

Haulani and Oxo Craters

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