This video captures some of the highlights of Dawn's interplanetary adventure, as well as some personal reflections on it.

With a rare excursion into first person, I wrote in my Aug. 22 Dawn Journal about how I felt with the mission coming to an end (and offered a fanciful additional perspective at the end of my Sept. 27 Dawn Journal). My feelings were unchanged when the end came. Nevertheless, in the actual event, I wrote down some of my thoughts, because Dawn was such a significant part of my life, and I am well aware of the fallibility of human memory. Memories, however vivid, are often more of a reconstruction than people like to believe.

But I quickly realized that it didn't matter how I was feeling! Here is an unedited excerpt of what I wrote after declaring the mission to be over: "These feelings are transitory, and I don't need to remember them anyway. It would be a mistake to consider how I feel now as somehow representing my overall experience or feelings about the mission. Indeed, this is very much the wrong time to try to put it into perspective. It would make a good story if I had some revelation or profound description of my feelings at this point, but there's no reason I should. It takes time to gain a good perspective. People construct and then gradually change their memories, all without any awareness. And I should not think that somehow now I will be imbued with the wisdom, insight, or other capability to put this into perspective. If I feel sad, elated, disappointed, relieved, proud, empty, gratified or any of myriad other feelings -- and, more to the point, a combination of myriad feelings -- I won't feel that way again. The end of Dawn is not what's important. All that preceded it is. And I cannot so easily grasp it all right now, so my feelings now are not as special or as meaningful as one might be tempted to think."

Finally, you can't appreciate the end of the mission if you don't appreciate the rest of the mission. So, feel free to reread the previous 310,000 words in Dawn Journals to gain the full appreciation.

There will be future opportunities to address some of the overall accomplishments of the mission and discoveries about Ceres. For now, we will devote more attention to this final phase.

And there was no doubt about its finality. On Nov. 1-2, immediately after the official end of the mission, there was not enough time to reallocate previously scheduled DSN antenna time to other missions. So although confidence was high that Dawn would forever be silent, each of the three deep space communications complexes (Goldstone, then Canberra, and then Madrid) turned a sensitive ear to Ceres for one last time. No surprises occurred.