NASA's Dawn Mission Pre- Close Approach News Briefing

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory hosted a Pre- Close Approach News Briefing on March 2 to discuss the March 6 arrival of the agency's Dawn spacecraft to the dwarf planet Ceres. The news briefing was held at JPL's von Karman Auditorium in Pasadena, California.

Ceres, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is the largest unexplored world of the inner solar system. Dawn will not only be the first spacecraft to reach a dwarf planet, it will be the first spacecraft ever to orbit two different worlds in deep space.
Dawn was the first spacecraft to orbit a body in the main asteroid belt when it explored the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012.

Participants in the news conference will be:
-- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Robert Mase, Dawn project manager, JPL
-- Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy principal investigator, JPL

[NTG]

Why are many of the "craters" hexagonal?!

[NTG]

DAWN's total life-cycle cost to date is only 473 million dollars over 15+ years!!!  Now THAT's a truly remarkable accomplishment!  Congratulations!

[JaredElliott]

Can't wait til the December photos.

[ZH]

.At 11.43, I assumed:
1) the lights may still continue to light up in the dark side.(energy comes from inside of Ceres?)
2) the source of lights are very powerful, huge and tall.(Comparing to the height of  rims of other craters)
3) no spewing of dust and reflection of light on the dust shows that they are not volcanoes

[cpjufzz]

Very strange white spots...

1. They are reflecting ? I do not know the image process of Dawn,
but they are so bright looking more glowing then reflecting ?
But it is captured a lot of times, so it can not be false rendering of the cam ?
How high is the imaging process in luminosity, over-whiteness ? 

2. When it is Ice, why it is still reflecting that much inside a crater,
where are more shadows, should not dime the reflection ?
Specially when having not the direct point of sunlight fall into the crater,
a reflection should not totally disappear, or at least dime very much down ?
And there is none 2nd spot where sunlight could reflect onto Ceres,
from a secondary sunlight source in this sense is not possible ?

3. I think not it should be water vapor, because we had already problems to capture water vapor,
but mostly we get water vapor spots from the side view as plumes and not from a direct point of view ?

Dawn is a pretty awesome space-mission, very interesting,
I hope the strange reflections of the 2 white spots will be solved, when getting more data of Dawn.   

[BrentClay]

Thank you. I enjoyed the briefing - the panel was excellent.

[whiteskullwhiteskull]

Why NASA not use KSP to show the animations?

[KwelNews]

This is so fantastic and exciting, these people are incredible for being able to build this.  I would however love if they had a link in this video bringing you through to a short video about the Discovery Progamme, and maybe a simplified video about the building of Dawn and why it's groundbreaking...  Something for those of us without scientific backgrounds but still super interested. :-D  

[dalecarpenter]

why is the edge blacked out so you can't see the topography in her movie?

[criskity]

After exploring Ceres, how about sending it to other asteroids? Juno, Pallas, Hygeia?

[dalecarpenter]

she says around the equator thats another way of saying 19.5 right without giving hoagland credit right ?

[criskity]

The plural of "process" is not "process-ease". It's not the name of a Greek philosopher. It's just a simple plural, like in "albatrosses".

[C_B_Hubbs]

At 5:39 XD "The capture will occur early on the morning, Friday March the 6th, at about 4:20 a.m. local time."
XD Mission controls gonna be celebrating after that capture, blazing it at 4:20.

[Maya_Sylph]

Its kind of sad that we have relatively travelled so far out but haven't come across any kind of life yet...wouldn't it be nice to meet some neighbours?

[quentinhogbladder]

Would someone from NASA PLEASE explain how impact craters form Hexagonal crater walls !?    Surely if these craters were formed by impact the crater rim would be round !?  Why do we not see ANY oblique craters ?  Are we expected to believe that EVERY impact was at 90 degrees to the surface ? 

[davidcakemann]

worth watching... wonder what it's name is. 

[jaywin]

the people that live on this planet are called paxaltaleka.

[E_Poltz]

nasa talk about the ovnis i want to know please

[mitchola]

hope there are now asteroids in orbit considering it is in the milky way?  I wonder if it has a super advanced laser system like the Enterprise..?  I like Asteroids

[mitchola]

like vesta.. it will yield a similar animation can make animations??  "my last graphic.. is another movie"  the folks you Jack Parsons and good ol' Wernher Von Braun.   Who are they you might ask?