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#1860 by Alpha_Centauri on 13 Nov, 2018 21:10
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Spacecraft are supposed to last the duration of their primary mission, everything else is a bonus.
Of course i'd love it if they carried on taking data after that with no technical issues but that is an entirely unrealistic expectation. -
#1861 by speedevil on 13 Nov, 2018 21:25
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Spacecraft are supposed to last the duration of their primary mission, everything else is a bonus.
They are supposed to last long enough to perform their primary mission - due to mission specification problems, the primary mission duration was not long enough to achieve this.
An extended mission would have come a lot closer.
(the variability of sun-like stars was not well known, and was assumed to be like the sun, when in fact it was considerably noisier) -
#1862 by Chris Bergin on 23 Nov, 2018 17:23
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ARTICLE: Dawn, the intrepid explorer of multiple worlds -
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/11/dawn-intrepid-explorer-multiple-worlds/ …
As we prepare for NASA's Mars InSight's big day, we look back at the work of the recently concluded Dawn mission.
- By Justin Davenport
https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1066034350943285248 -
#1863 by Star One on 10 Dec, 2018 21:00
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Team finds evidence for carbon-rich surface on CeresQuote
A team led by Southwest Research Institute has concluded that the surface of dwarf planet Ceres is rich in organic matter. Data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft indicate that Ceres's surface may contain several times the concentration of carbon than is present in the most carbon-rich, primitive meteorites found on Earth.
"Ceres is like a chemical factory," said SwRI's Dr. Simone Marchi, a principal scientist who was the lead author of research published in Nature Astronomy today. "Among inner solar system bodies, Ceres' has a unique mineralogy, which appears to contain up to 20 percent carbon by mass in its near surface. Our analysis shows that carbon-rich compounds are intimately mixed with products of rock-water interactions, such as clays." -
#1864 by Star One on 17 Jun, 2019 17:12
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AHUNA MONS: A MUDDY, ICY VOLCANO ON CERESQuote
This is an oblong mountain sticking out of the side of the protoplanet, 17 km across at its base and stretching over 4 kilometers high into the airless sky. It’s flat-topped, like a mesa, with long angled flanks surrounding it like a skirt. There’s nothing else like it on Ceres, and with the exception of a single adjacent crater, the terrain around it is relatively flat and devoid of any structures. Ahuna Mons literally stands alone.
And that’s weird. Ceres has no tectonic activity, so it can’t grow mountains that way. That usually forms mountain chains, anyway (like the continental plate collisions on Earth that created the Rocky Mountains and the Himalayas).
That only leaves one other explanation: Upwelling. Literally something under the surface trying its best to get out. -
#1865 by FutureSpaceTourist on 29 Jul, 2019 09:51
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Quote
Ahuna Mons on Ceres
This image, based on observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows the largest mountain on the dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn was the first mission to orbit an object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and spent time at both large asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is one of just five recognised dwarf planets in the Solar System (Pluto being another). Dawn entered orbit around this rocky world on 6 March 2015, and studied its icy, cratered, uneven surface until it ran out of fuel in October of 2018.
One of the features spotted by the mission is shown here in this reconstructed perspective view: a mountain named Ahuna Mons. This mountain rises to an elevation of 4000 m at its peak – Europe’s Mont Blanc on Earth would rise slightly above it (as measured from sea level) – and is marked by numerous bright streaks that run down its flanks. Scientists have determined that these marks are actually salt deposits left behind from the formation of Ahuna Mons, when plumes of saltwater and mud rose and erupted from within Ceres, puncturing the surface and creating the mountain seen here. While temperatures on Ceres are far colder than those on Earth, this mechanism is thought to be somewhat similar to the formation of volcanoes by terrestrial magma plumes.
More recently, a study of Dawn data led by ESA research fellow Ottaviano Ruesch and Antonio Genova (Sapienza Università di Roma), published in Nature Geoscience in June, suggests that a briny, muddy ‘slurry’ exists below Ceres’ surface, surging upwards towards and through the crust to create Ahuna Mons. Another recent study, led by Javier Ruiz of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and published in Nature Astronomy in July, also indicates that the dwarf planet has a surprisingly dynamic geology.
Ceres was also the focus of an earlier study by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, which detected water vapour around the dwarf planet. Published in Nature in 2014, the result provided a strong indication that Ceres has ice on or near its surface. Dawn confirmed Ceres’ icy crust via direct observation in 2016, however, the contribution of the ice deposits to Ceres’ exosphere turned out to be much lower than that inferred from the Herschel observations.
The perspective view depicted in this image uses enhanced-colour combined images taken using blue (440 nm), green (750 nm), and infrared (960 nm) filters, with a resolution of 35 m/pixel. Ahuna Mons’ elevation has been exaggerated by a factor of two. The width of the dome is approximately 20 km. The spacecraft’s Framing Camera took the images from Dawn’s low-altitude mapping orbit from an altitude of 385 km in August 2016.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/48402671921/
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#1866 by Star One on 11 Aug, 2020 18:57
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Highlighting Bright Areas of Ceres' Occator Crater
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA24021 -
#1867 by Star One on 19 Oct, 2023 16:25
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Quote
Considering the significant organic material on Ceres, combined with indications of its substantial water ice content, experts believe that the planet might have the essential elements to foster life beyond Earth.
“Although researchers have performed impact and shock experiments on various types of organics in the past, what was missing was a study dedicated to the type of organics detected on Ceres using the same type of analytical method used by the Dawn spacecraft to detect them,” Daly said, emphasizing the value of comparative analysis of the organic data derived from the dwarf planet.
https://www.earth.com/news/dwarf-planet-ceres-could-potentially-sustain-life/