Dawn Cruise Options

[SkyeLab]

Pushing out of Earth orbit now...........

[Hungry4info]

@ tasp

They may not due that so as to conserve fuel. According to Wikipedia (which I realise may not be accurate), if the Vesta and Ceres investigations are successful, DAWN may go on to Pallas -- something I would really love to see.

[vjkane]

They may not due that so as to conserve fuel. According to Wikipedia (which I realise may not be accurate), if the Vesta and Ceres investigations are successful, DAWN may go on to Pallas -- something I would really love to see.

Per the Dawn Q&A page: "Q: Will there be opportunities to visit other asteroids, either en route to Ceres or as part of an extended mission?
Answer: Unlikely, because there is greater return by spending more of our resources on Vesta and Ceres." http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/faqs.asp#

I personally have my doubts about this answer. If at the end of the *extended* Ceres investigations, there is still meaningful amounts of fuel left, I strongly suspect that Dawn will either 1) be sent to orbit another asteroid (a fairly expensive option because of mission ops) or 2) be sent to flyby one or more other bodies in similar solar orbits as Ceres (a less expensive option). NASA is really good at getting the most bang out of a working spacecraft. On the other hand, I don't think that anyone is working really hard on the question of what to do after Ceres -- that event is 7 years away and lots of things can happen to fuel levels, spacecraft and instrument health, and NASA budgets.