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Asteroid Belt Essay

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The paper is an overview of dawn mission that is designed to study two large bodies in the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. The dawn mission journeys to the center of the main asteroid belt to orbit and explore the two most massive main belt asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. Dawn aims to increase or understanding not just of the present state of these two bodies, but also of the conditions during the time of their formation. It attempts this through achieving a set of measurement objectives in which the physical properties of these asteroids such as mass, slopes, size, density, and spin state are accurately determined, and in which the mineralogical and elemental composition of the surface and near-surface material are probed. Dawn employs ion propulsion technology to enable a modestly-sized launcher to start a moderately-sized spacecraft on its journey, to not only reach the two massive asteroids but also to orbit them, descending to near the surface. They both have survived largely intact through the collisional history of the solar system. Furthermore, evidence shows that each has …show more content…

2.34 AU) and if there was little migration during the initial stages of formation, this body should be cooler and more primitive, all else being equal. However, all else cannot be equal because Ceres is clearly a wet planet, containing hydrated minerals, contrasting sharply with the dry basaltic surface of Vasta. Keeping water on Ceres is not easy. While Ceres is bigger, it releases more gravitational energy during accretion. If it formed contemporaneously with Vesta it too should have gathered radionuclides, and would become even hotter than Vesta, but Ceres did not proceed in this way. (Reference 5, 6)
2.2 The Discovery of the Asteroid Belt The discovery of the asteroid belt was a direct outgrowth of our understanding (or

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