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Dawn's smooth move presented by science

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at NASA when a nasa spacecraft goes into

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orbit around a new world for the first

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time the control room is usually packed

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to capacity with scientists engineers

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and dignitaries ready to leap and shout

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when the retrorockets fire it's a big

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noisy event July fifteenth 2011 was one

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of those days NASA's Dawn spacecraft

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approached Vesta and became the first

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probe from earth to orbit a main belt

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asteroid Dawn's cameras revealed a dozen

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at world of transcendent beauty

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thrilling everyone who works in the

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project needless to say the control room

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was silent actually it was empty says

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Don chief engineer mark Raymond of

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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Don

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entered orbit on a Friday night i myself

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was out dancing with my wife and friends

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what gives Raymond an avid folk dancer

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explains I really was out dancing

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confident that the padded ER being

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performed 188 million kilometers away

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would be executed with lawless precision

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indeed Don is unprecedented while most

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spacecraft blast off earth atop a

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firestorm of conventional rocket exhaust

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then coast to their destinations with

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engines turned off to conserve fuel dawn

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was able to continue thrusting

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throughout its voyage Dawn's

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fuel-efficient ion engines gently

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propelled the spacecraft toward Vesta

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for more than three years never exerting

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more force than the weight of a feather

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held in your open palm yet over time

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gathering enough speed to catch an

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asteroid racing halfway across the solar

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system with the ion engines firing

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almost constantly mission controllers

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were able to actively steer the probe

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gradually reshaping Dawn's orbit around

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the Sun until it matched the orbit of

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Vesta itself meeting Vesta for orbital

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insertion wasn't a jarring encounter of

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mismatched velocities it was more like

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two dancers merging and practiced rhythm

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to a familiar tune

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dawn did not miss a beat as it flew into

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vestas grasp says Raymond the spacecraft

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moved gently into orbit with the same

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grace it has displayed during its nearly

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1,000 days of ion propulsion through the

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solar system calculations show that the

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moment of orbit insertion occurred on

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Friday night July fifteenth around nine

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forty-five pacific time at that moment

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Dawn's orbit around the Sun finally was

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so close to that of Vesta that the proto

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planets gravity could take hold of it

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radio signals picked up by the Deep

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Space Network on July sixteenth

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confirmed that the spaceship an asteroid

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were truly a pair Don will spend the

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next year circling Vesta in a series of

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descending passes bringing the giant

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asteroids surface ever closer to Dawn's

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cameras and other science instruments

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because Vesta is a relic of long ago

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planet formation a glimpse into the

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ancient history of our solar system

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could be revealed under dawn's careful

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scrutiny this really beautiful dance

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says Raymond is just getting started for

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updates from dusta and more smooth moves