Ceres High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO), Late summer through fall 2015 |
Ceres High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO), Late summer through fall 2015 |
Aug 17 2015, 01:42 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 541 Joined: 17-November 05 From: Oklahoma Member No.: 557 |
DAWN arrived in its new lower mapping orbit on August 13th. The DAWN team is preparing to resume science observation tomorrow on the 17th.
From the Current Mission Status page at the DAWN website: QUOTE August 13, 2015 - Dawn Arrives in Third Mapping Orbit
Dawn completed the maneuvering to reach its third mapping orbit and stopped ion-thrusting this afternoon. This was a little ahead of schedule because the spiral descent went so well that some of the allocated thrusting time was not needed. Since July 14, the spacecraft has reduced its orbital altitude from 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) to approximately 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The orbit period has correspondingly decreased from 3.1 days to 19 hours. Dawn is scheduled to begin its new observations on the evening of Aug. 17 (PDT) and continue for more than two months. First, however, the mission control team will measure the actual orbit parameters accurately and transmit them to the spacecraft. |
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Aug 28 2015, 09:45 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2998 Joined: 30-October 04 Member No.: 105 |
Three views, and musings, of "Tall Mountain", Ceres
Exaggerated View https://univ.smugmug.com/Dawn-Mission/Ceres...enh4--ref-L.png Relief and Elevation Maps https://univ.smugmug.com/Dawn-Mission/Ceres...rt--annot-L.png First HAMO image https://univ.smugmug.com/Dawn-Mission/Ceres...t-N--enh1-L.png --Bill -------------------- |
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Aug 28 2015, 05:31 PM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 21 Joined: 30-June 15 From: Brooklyn NY Member No.: 7543 |
Let me go out on a limb on the lonely mountain. If this is an uplifted feature, I've been puzzled by the lack of debris around the base. Now that I'm looking more carefully, I see relatively fewer small craters around the base to the North and East (12-4 o'clock), especially between the mountain and the crater (12-2 o'clock). There is obvious flow INTO the crater (11 o'clock). And to the Northwest and West, perhaps what looks like a splash or flow (11-9 o'clock). What if the Northeastern half of the mountain lifted first? The ice (?) interior was exposed as the regolith sloughed off. By this interpretation, the Southwestern quarter of the mountain has uplifted more recently, carrying its cratered surface with it. The regolith has not yet sloughed away. I see no sign of debris flow (yet) there, around the base of the mountain (~9-4 o'clock). Alternatively, the lonely mountain results from a single uplift event, but for whatever reason the rake of the NE half was steeper -- causing the powdered regolith to slough away there. |
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