2 Pallas Options

[Paolo]

no one seems to have noticed this
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5950/275

[nprev]

Landing or crashing is not considered an option since the spacecraft is not sterilized. Apparently, this would violate NASA Planetary Protection Protocols for Ceres.

Of course, that begs the question of what the plan is should a flyby of any target of opportunity not be possible. I'd guess that would leave just escaping Ceres in a non-targeted way or at the very least raising the orbit as high as possible before the xenon is exhausted and/or a critical failure occurs that renders the spacecraft uncontrollable.

[HSchirmer]

Landing or crashing is not considered an option since the spacecraft is not sterilized.
Apparently, this would violate NASA Planetary Protection Protocols for Ceres.

Sorry, should have been clearer, impact on Pallas, not Ceres.
Get all the photos you can from the spacecraft before Dawn impacts on Pallas.
Then Earth-based telescopes coordinate to do spectroscopy of the ejecta.

Hmm, now that I'm thinking of it, not sure if Dawn would have enough bandwidth
to offload the data or be able to point the main antenna to stream all the date live.