Saturday, July 16, 2011

Now We Wait....

Hey Space Placers!

Dawn should be in orbit around Vesta but it will be awhile until we know it. Vesta should have captured Dawn at 1 a.m. today 7-16-11. The communication window to confirm all went well opens later today as explained in a NASA press release: "

They expect to hear from the spacecraft and confirm that it performed as planned during a scheduled communications pass that starts at approximately 11:30 p.m. PDT on Saturday, July 16 (2:30 a.m. EDT Sunday, July 17). When Vesta captures Dawn into its orbit, engineers estimate there will be approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) between them. At that point, the spacecraft and asteroid will be approximately 117 million miles (188 million kilometers) from Earth."

So now all we can do is wait.  Read More About It: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Sky Guy in VA

No comments:

Post a Comment