Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
CERES-LY: Big news from NASA today. Launched seven and a half years ago and traveling 3.1 billion miles using an ion propulsion system, Dawn is now orbiting a dwarf planet - a spaceflight first!
The photo above was taken on March 1, when Dawn was closing in on Ceres. (It's about 30,000 miles/48,000 kilometers away in the photo.) Dawn was captured by Ceres' gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST today.
We're looking forward to learning more about the dwarf, including what the heck those bright spots are that Dawn spotted on it back in February.
You think it's E.T.s signaling us with mirrors?! ;)
The bright spots are "truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, said in a NASA press release.
Check out this short, interesting video from NASA about the Dawn mission.
The photo above was taken on March 1, when Dawn was closing in on Ceres. (It's about 30,000 miles/48,000 kilometers away in the photo.) Dawn was captured by Ceres' gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST today.
We're looking forward to learning more about the dwarf, including what the heck those bright spots are that Dawn spotted on it back in February.
You think it's E.T.s signaling us with mirrors?! ;)
The bright spots are "truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, said in a NASA press release.
Check out this short, interesting video from NASA about the Dawn mission.
More info about the Dawn spacecraft and its mission is here: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn
QUICK TRIP: I didn't post last night because we were in the midst of a whirlwind road trip. Thursday, when the kids got out of class at noon, we hit I-5 southbound to Vancouver. There, we met up with some family (hi Nonnie and Bops!) for a nice evening of food, fun and games. This morning, we were back on the freeway at 9 a.m. in order to be back to Seattle by noon, to get Christian to work and the kids to their film making class.
I (rather stupidly) didn't take a single photo (!) during our trip, gosh darn it. We did, however, manage to use the time in the car to finish week 8 of our "Introduction to Classical Music" class. The lectures covered minimalism, modernism, and post modern classical music (think Philip Glass). We took all of our quizzes and have now officially finished that class. What a wonderful, worthwhile endeavor that was. I know we'll all miss it, and predict we listen to lots more classical music than we did before we took the course.
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