spacetoday.net: Dawn mission declared over

Dawn mission declared over

Posted: Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 8:58 AM ET (1358 GMT)
Dawn spacecraft illustration (UCLA/W. Hartman)

NASA announced Thursday that the Dawn mission to the asteroid belt has come to an end. The agency said the spacecraft failed to make contact with the Earth as planned Wednesday and Thursday, leading controllers to conclude that the spacecraft had run out of hydrazine fuel needed for attitude control. Dawn was running low on hydrazine and mission officials expected it to run out of fuel this fall. Dawn launched in 2007 and went into orbit around Vesta, and later Ceres, where the spacecraft remains today. The end of Dawn comes two days after NASA announced the end of Kepler spacecraft operations, also because it ran out of fuel.