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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Sep 8 2015, 09:19 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 423 Joined: 13-November 14 From: Norway Member No.: 7310 |
After some searching, I was able to find an interview with Christopher Russell on a dubious website (though the interview itself seems fine enough) saying pretty much the same thing (about an embargo):
QUOTE We were just ready to submit with the press release written and the images of the bright spots were in our press release. And then, we realized that one of the investigators had sent in a paper to the publication Nature, which required an embargo for us not to talk before publication [...] the trouble with getting involved with these journals, the paper's been sent out for review, but it isn't accepted, so we're in this Never Never Land of not knowing [the embargo date]. But the new pictures are lovely. QUOTE OK. First of all, it looks like there's a fairly thick dusting of white powder. It covers the area nice and smoothly, and it goes up and down over the terrain, so something's been puffing out white powder in the region probably for some time. There's no evidence that it's puffing right now, but somehow there's been a fine, probably fairly thick layer of this white powder covering the region that we call the bright spot. QUOTE OK, first of all, this is not a statement that is without controversy. And that statement about 'haze' was made definitely by a team member, but other team members are questioning it now. 'haze.' Some team members are saying this is scattered light — or equivalent to scattered light. Since it was such a faint observation, they had to blow up the images further than really was justified and perhaps made some artifacts in the data. (source) I have seen nothing about this in other channels, though. -------------------- |
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