Dawn is about 1 hour from closest approach

Go DAWN !!! On to Vesta

ken

here's a nice view

Click to view attachment

Will we have live NASA TV coverage of the event?

Just checked NASA TV. Nothing related to DAWN at the moment.

I don't expect anything on NASA TV. Not even a phone press briefing. Probably just a text press release after it's all over; they've already done a pre-flyby release.

--Emily

the team top priority is focused on threading the needle for the slingshot to Vesta.

there are very interesting details here on imaging coordination between DAWN and MEX
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Dawn_To_...r_Mars_999.html

ken

updated view:
Click to view attachment

A friend of mine on my own forum asks me whether you have any information about the images and when they are expected to be released.

According dmuller's realtime simulation the main antenna will be pointed to Earth tomorrow. It's safe to assume there will be no images transmitted before that.

There's a bit of a write-up on Space.com, but not much news yet ...

Asteroid-Bound Probe Zooms Past Mars

- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA

Luckily there's enough GAS onboard the DAWN spacecraft to last for the dual flyby

apparently things look good but much more analysis is needed as expected. No official announcements have been posted at this time

Does anyone know when the data is supposed to be transmitted?

Dawn Spacecraft View of Mars

Looks like it's like a Mars Odyssey image

Here are a few context views from Celestia and Google Earth of this image's location:

Wow, that is a pretty close-up view, if I'm interpreting it correctly. Going by Google Mars, the smallest craters in that view are about the size of Victoria, maybe a little smaller?

Right, it's about 55 m/pixel, so a Victoria-sized crater would be resolved. i hadn'r expected such high resolution - looking forward to the rest of the data set!

Phil

there will be no more pictures. but the one is gorgeous indeed ! instrument calibration data was collected. The gravity assist went quite well which was the purpose, not to collect science data. Details should be appearing at JPL website quite soon

ken


Edit 27 Feb

Mars Flyby Press release has just issued:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-034

New JPL Mars Flyby Press release has just issued with a cool mosiac comparing the same location of the image taken by Dawn to earlier photos taken by MGS and MEX
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/hrsc.asp

See a higher resolution version of the mosaic at my DAWN talk on Apr 15 at Gloucester County College, NJ
http://www.gccnj.edu/news_and_alerts/rotat.../ken_kremer.cfm

ken

So there were more images after all! It looks like they were cloudy or otherwise not very good, which might explain why they were not released. Now maybe we will also learn more about the other calibrations.

Phil