Dawn has Departed the Giant Asteroid Vesta

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Jia-Rui.C.Cook@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2012-277 Sept. 5, 2012

Dawn Mission Status Report

Dawn has Departed the Giant Asteroid Vesta

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-277&cid=release_2012-277

PASADENA, Calif. -- Mission controllers received confirmation today that NASA's
Dawn spacecraft has escaped from the gentle gravitational grip of the giant asteroid
Vesta. Dawn is now officially on its way to its second destination, the dwarf planet
Ceres.

Dawn departed from Vesta at about 11:26 p.m. PDT on Sept. 4 (2:26 a.m. EDT on
Sept. 5). Communications from the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network
confirmed the departure and that the spacecraft is now traveling toward Ceres.

"As we respectfully say goodbye to Vesta and reflect on the amazing discoveries
over the past year, we eagerly look forward to the next phase of our adventure at
Ceres, where even more exciting discoveries await," said Robert Mase, Dawn project
manager, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Launched on Sept. 27, 2007, Dawn slipped into orbit around Vesta on July 15, 2011
PDT (July 16 EDT). Over the past year, Dawn has comprehensively mapped this
previously uncharted world, revealing an exotic and diverse planetary building
block. The findings are helping scientists unlock some of the secrets of how the solar
system, including our own Earth, was formed.

A web video celebrating Dawn's "greatest hits" at Vesta is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=151669301 .
Two of Dawn's last looks at Vesta are also now available, revealing the creeping
dawn over the north pole.

Dawn spiraled away from Vesta as gently as it arrived. It is expected to pull into its
next port of call, Ceres, in early 2015.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for
overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and
built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for
Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National
Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. The
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

-end-


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