On with the mission NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

NASA’S Dawn mission will spend another year orbiting Ceres, an icy dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Since arriving at Ceres in 2015, Dawn has found organic compounds, water ice and unexpected bright spots.

Mission engineers are deciding how to manoeuvre the craft to let it fly less than 200 kilometres above the surface during its extended mission. This should allow it to measure gamma rays and neutrons emanating from Ceres, to find out what its crust is made of and how much ice it has.

By April 2018, Ceres will be at its closest to the sun. That could help Dawn confirm whether Ceres’s orbit allows the sun’s heat to evaporate its ice, creating a thin, fleeting atmosphere.


With this latest extension, Dawn will keep doing science until it runs out of fuel and ceases to communicate with Earth. Even after that, it will remain in orbit instead of crash-landing, so that it doesn’t contaminate Ceres with microbes that may have hitched a ride from Earth.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Extended Dawn”