The US probe Dawn ended a seven and a half years to enter the orbit of Ceres to explore the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System.
the first visit by a space exploration spacecraft this celestial body.
Now Dawn begins 16 months of exploration on the surface of Ceres in order to study its structure and gather clues to help better understand the formation of the Solar System 4000 500 million years ago.
The probe was captured by the gravity of Ceres when he was 61 000 kilometers of the planet, said the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL ) spacecraft.
“After traveling 4000 kilometers 900 million in a seven and a half years, Dawn reached its destination,” said Marc Rayman, director of mission at JPL.
“After being discovered in 1801, Ceres was it considered a planet all the way, then an asteroid and now a dwarf planet,” he added.
Ceres is the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System. Most of these planets orbit the Sun beyond Neptune, but Ceres is in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Dwarf planets are smaller than the Moon stars, but are not satellites. Revolve around the sun and still have not “cleaned” its orbit other stars or rock.
“The study of Ceres can be traced back to the history of space and the data collected by Dawn could it lead to breakthroughs in the understanding of the solar system, “he said earlier this week Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA.
The latest images of the dwarf planet that were taken by Dawn revealed numerous craters and colon exceptionally bright, close together, scientists still can not explain.
No comments:
Post a Comment