[meteorite-list] Dawn Gets Closer Views of Ceres

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4475

Dawn Gets Closer Views of Ceres
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
February 4, 2015

[Animation]
This image is one several images NASA's Dawn spacecraft took on approach 
to Ceres on Feb. 4, 2015 at a distance of about 90,000 miles (145,000 
kilometers) from the dwarf planet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA 

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, on approach to dwarf planet Ceres, has acquired 
its latest and closest-yet snapshot of this mysterious world. The image 
of Ceres, taken on Feb. 4, 2015, from a distance of about 90,000 miles 
(145,000 kilometers), is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19174 
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19179

At a resolution of 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel, the pictures represent 
the sharpest images to date of Ceres.

After the spacecraft arrives and enters into orbit around the dwarf planet, 
it will study the intriguing world in great detail. Ceres, with a diameter 
of 590 miles (950 kilometers), is the largest object in the main asteroid 
belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
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 Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Virginia, designed 
and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute 
of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max 
Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, with significant 
contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary 
Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and 
Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared 
mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the 
Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is 
managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and 
Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los 
Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary 
Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

For more information about Dawn, visit:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov


Media Contact

Elizabeth Landau 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-6425
Elizabeth.Landau at jpl.nasa.gov 

2015-051