After a 3.5-year interplanetary journey, unmanned spacecraft, Dawn, began to approach his first destination, the asteroid Vesta. This vehicle is planned to be an end to journey into the solar system objects in the asteroid belt, namely the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015.
Aviation and Space Agency for the United States (NASA) announced last May 3, the Dawn spacecraft, launched from the U.S. Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 27, 2007, starting near Vesta. Now, Dawn is just 1.21 million kilometers of Vesta and have traveled 4.8 billion kiometer from Earth.
The primary mission of this spacecraft is to collect information on two objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres ie. Asteroid belt is a region that is rich asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.
If all plans went well, the engine driver of a vehicle will start to enter the orbit of Vesta on 16 July. When Dawn reaches a height of 16,000 km from the surface of Vesta, the vehicle will be caught by the gravity of Vesta.
Dawn will orbit Vesta for about one year. A number of instruments in the spacecraft will collect various data of this asteroid from its chemical composition, shape and texture of the surface topography, until the force of gravity.
