[X] My Assistant

[dilo]

As suggested by "TheAnt", is time to start a new thread!

Due to lack of updates from "Mystic simulator", I asked directly to Marc Rayman for an update and he kindly sent me the following "unofficial" plots, showing evolution of distance, radial velocity and sub-spacecraft latitude (radius trend is splitted in two plots with different scales due to huge variation of the distance):


I did not publish them immediately because I wanted to integrate them with my previous plots but, due to the lack of time in last week, I decided to post them directly with only minimal changes.
As you can see, third engine stop occurred on Aug 8-18 at almost 2300km above Vesta while next (final) one is just started and, as reported by Marc in his latest journal, will be used to map North polar regions from 6000km distance. Thereafter thrust will resume and, based on plots, on Sept 5 total speed will overcome escape velocity (almost 45 m/s), so total energy balance will be zero; definitive exit from Vesta Hill sphere should occur after 20 days but consider that the times could slighty change due to orbit refinement and thrust plan changes.

[Explorer1]

Huh, that's a tiny fraction of the tilt of Vesta and Ceres; its even smaller than Mars and Venus.
So many tempting targets out there for future missions (Dawn 2 anyone?).

[djellison]

Huh, that's a tiny fraction of the tilt of Vesta and Ceres; its even smaller than Mars and Venus.

But it certainly is not 'exactly the same orbital plane as us'