NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took this image of Ceres’ south polar region on May 17, 2017. Launched on Sept. 27, 2007, Dawn was NASA’s first truly interplanetary spaceship. The mission featured extended stays at two extraterrestrial bodies: giant asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, both in the debris-strewn main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The spacecraft’s name was meant to present a simple view of the mission’s purpose: to provide information on the dawn of the solar system. The three principal scientific drivers for the mission were to capture the earliest moments in the origin of the solar system, determine the nature of the building blocks from which the terrestrial planets formed, and contrast the formation and evolution of two small planets that followed very different evolutionary paths.
Dawn completed the first order exploration of the inner solar system, addressed NASA’s goal of understanding the origin and evolution of the solar system, and complemented investigations of Mercury, Earth, and Mars. Dawn’s mission ended on Nov. 1, 2018, after two extended missions.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
NASA的黎明号（Dawn）宇宙飞船于2017年5月17日拍摄了这张谷神星（Ceres）南极区域的图像。黎明号于2007年9月27日发射，是NASA首个真正意义上的星际探测器。该任务的特点是长期驻留在两个外星天体上：巨型小行星灶神星（Vesta）和矮行星谷神星（Ceres），它们都位于火星与木星之间的主小行星带。
这艘探测器被命名为黎明，象征着该任务的目标：探索太阳系的黎明时代。该任务的三个核心科学目标是：捕捉太阳系起源的最初时刻；解析形成类地行星的基本组成成分；对比两颗小型行星——灶神星与谷神星，它们经历了截然不同的演化路径。
黎明号 完成了对内太阳系的初步探索，响应了NASA理解太阳系起源与演化的研究目标，并与对水星、地球和火星的研究相互补充。黎明号的任务于2018年11月1日结束，在完成两次延长任务后正式退役。
跟随任务主任兼首席工程师马克·雷曼博士（Dr. Marc Rayman）博士的文字，回顾黎明号从地球出发奔赴深空的旅程。
影像来源: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
