It’s a journey more than seven years in the making. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has begun its approach toward Ceres, a dwarf planet NASA says has never been visited by a spacecraft
And that approach is a long one. The Dawn spacecraft is still a whopping 400,000 miles away from Ceres, but it’s moving at speeds of up to 450 miles per hour, so it’s on track to arrive in early March
The craft navigates with the help of special ion thrusters
“We give the gas xenon a little electric charge. And then they’re called ions. And we use a big voltage to accelerate the xenon ions through this metal grid. And we shoot them out of the engine at up to 90,000 mph. And they’re going out so fast, that each individual ion gives a relatively large push back on the spacecraft,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn Chief Engineer and Mission Director at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a NASA video Read more...
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