We have explained before that Dawn will never go closer to Ceres. There are several reasons. The rate at which hydrazine is consumed depends quite strongly on the altitude, so if the probe ventured lower, its lifetime would be significantly shorter. (Similarly, at higher altitude, it uses less hydrazine and so its lifetime would be longer.) Ceres has water (albeit mostly frozen, although perhaps some as liquid), energy (both from the distant sun and from radioactive elements incorporated when Ceres formed more than 4.5 billion years ago), and some of the other important ingredients for the development of life. We want to protect this astrobiologically interesting environment from the spacecraft's terrestrial contamination, so we cannot risk going low enough that it might crash, even long after the mission concludes. (And a controlled landing is not possible.) Also, at lower altitudes Dawn would orbit so fast that pictures and other measurements would be smeared, reducing the benefit of being closer. There are other reasons as well, but the bottom line is that this orbit is where Dawn draws its bottom line.

Ever creative, the team has found new ways to increase the mission's scientific productivity. Once again, the strategy involves changes never anticipated and that may be contrary to what your intuition would suggest. For more than two years, your correspondent has been emphasizing that this would be Dawn's final orbit. Now, on Sept. 2, Dawn will begin flying to a higher altitude.

The prospect of raising the orbit also raises several natural questions about what will happen in the coming months, including how, why and what kind of cake will be served at the team's celebration on Sept. 27 of the ninth anniversary of Dawn's launch. This month, let's look at how, and as the team refines its plans for the other key questions, we will discuss the answers in future Dawn Journals.

To gain altitude, Dawn will take advantage of its remarkable ion propulsion system. Ion propulsion has enabled many bold missions from Star Trek to Star Wars to NASA's unique expedition to orbit Vesta and Ceres, which would have been not simply difficult but impossible with conventional propulsion. And like the spaceships that in science fiction fly wherever they want to go, now Dawn will use its xenon ions to maneuver to an orbit it would not otherwise to able to reach. (Despite the similarity, there are some ways in which Dawn differs from the fictional ships: our craft uncompromisingly obeys all the laws of physics and carries relatively few systems designed to destroy other ships in battle.)