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Riding an Ion Drive to the Asteroid Belt
Iron Condor writes "JPL is now close to embarking on another of its trademark, one-of-a-kind missions, this time to the heart of the asteroid belt: The Dawn mission is being prepared for launch this summer from Kennedy Space Center. Dawn will explore Ceres and Vesta, the two largest known asteroids in our solar system, which lie in the vast expanse between Mars and Jupiter. In the process, the mission will make history on several fronts. Besides being the first spacecraft to orbit a main-belt asteroid and the first to ever orbit two targets after leaving Earth, Dawn will be the first science mission powered by electric ion propulsion, the world's most advanced and efficient space propulsion technology."
Aren't ions charged (or charge-stripped) particles? Do we really need to say "electric ions"? Is there another kind?
From the summary: Dawn will be the first science mission powered by electric ion propulsion
s . For example, Deep Space 1 used electric ion thrusters.
No, a quick Wikipedia check says otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster#Mission
Nasa's Deep Space 1 first used ION Propulsion several years ago. http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
I enjoyed the article - take a look at the FAQ. The author(s) mention that ION drive is "acceleration with patience" - it will take 6 years of accelerate to change the spacecraft's velocity by 10KM/s but will use a fraction of the weight of propellant that conventional chemical propulsion would.
Space exploration and the related technology are still in their infancy, it is really exciting to to see the stuff of decades old sci-fi making into reality. Who can predict what non-conventional propulsion systems will look like in 50 years?
KK4SFV
One thing that surprised me was the fact that it will be the first spacecraft to orbit two seperate targets after launch. For some reason I did not think that this was a difficult thing to do, though now that it has been brought to my attention I can understand why.
I'm not using Ion Drives until the TIE fighter goes into production.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
This mission would (as far as I'm aware) also be the first man-made object to orbit a dwarf planet at any time, even before the dwarf planet designation was created. Which reminds me: should Ceres still be referred to as an asteroid, as it has been named a dwarf planet recently?
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
is fit it with a couple of ion cannons, a damper field, a time-warp facilitator and a phasing cloak, and it will defend the solar system!
Yes, look at how those Twin Ion Engine (TIE) Fighters faired in that asteroid belt. Not good.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
Correction: Ceres is now the smallest dwarf planet.
you insensitive lout.
If you see a rock violating the law of gravity, then the law is wrong, not the rock!
Space Slugs are known to feast on space craft that come to close to their cave.
At least three previous space probes used ion engines. JAXA launched Hayabusa, now returning a sample of a asteroid to earth, The European Space Agency launched SMART-1, a lunar orbiter and NASA built Deep Space One.
t _041116.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/smart-1_orbi
Dear god that sounds cool. I want one.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
This one for liftoff from Earth (exhaust is not radioactive), and in-system work, and this one for deep-space missions. We can move thousands of tons around with these, cheaply and safely. (Note: neither of these is an Orion type, which is another option.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Dawn is attempting to explore Vesta. Cancel or Allow?
But wouldn't a stream of charged particles from the engine mess up the data collected?
Manned missions are launched from Kennedy - this is being launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. They are different facilities.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No, he's citing a hollywood movie because you clearly are sans clue, and he probably figured that would be a reference you might recall and understand. Look it frigging up, rather than being both wrong and snotty.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Reading below, this is NOT the:
First to visit an asteroid
First to orbit two targets
or First to use an Ion Drive
and, in fact, space probes are now becoming sufficiently common for the launches to be a yawn in the press. The Europeans are dropping probes on Titan, for christsake!
What is it with us? This kind of trumpeting makes the rest of the world assume we're so insecure that we need to keep pretending that we're the best...... Oh wait, maybe that's true??
The US and Russian moon missions orbited two targets 50 years ago.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Every once in a while I drift back to Doc Smith on the bookshelf. Although his space suits were made of Bakelite, some of his thoughts were rather far-seeing (thinking for example of the replicated logic units of his Skylark electronic brain) considering he wrote in the 30's, where Einstein's mass-energy equation hadn't yet been popularised. Pre-atomic era. He thought that with enough energy you could turn energy directly into matter and use that for reaction mass. Sturgeon's Law holds with his ideas, for sure, but still it really makes me wonder...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The article says "not including the earth".
I assumed people would RTFA first but I guess slashdotters would rather quickly point out what they think is an error.
Windowz sucks lol!!!!!
But what are they going to do? The autopilot shuts itself off as soon as the ship is near an asteroid field.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Have you ever looked at where the asteroid belt lies? maybe we'll prove once and for all that there was a planet that
had an orbit between mars and jupiter.
The first thing the Dawn probe transmits apon arriving at the asteroid belt:
"My position is correct, except...no, Alderaan!"
"It ain't there. It's been totally blown away!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It's nice to see well thought out and efficient science experiments like this one. The asteroids in our solar system are probably more valuable to us in the short term than any of the planets or moons, with the exception of our own moon. I remember an estimate of how much iron is in the asteroid belt once and its enough to cover the earth several times over.
As scary or foolish as it may seem, our only future is to get off this rock and learn to live in space. Mars is El Dorado, worthless except in the minds of poets and dreamers. There may be hope for purchase on some of the moons, but to get to them or Mars we'll have to have already adapted to space.
I don't think it will work with out fusion, but if they find gold or oil in one of those rocks, who knows what could happen.
I dunno, it seems to me that a mission to the asteroids is precisely the WRONG field to employ an ion-emission engine.
Ion engines are low thrust, long duration power - meaning very^2 slow to accelerate. Certainly, as a
cruising engine, it's great. But in the asteroid belt, I'd suspect that to be an environment where it's (relatively) cluttered, and somewhat quick accelerations in any sort of direction might be required. Maybe it's a relative thing, and an asteroid field is actually less cluttered then a planetary environment, but I would have assumed that they'd built into the navigation systems some sort of local surveillance and autonomy to avoid untracked debris that may pose a hazard to the spacecraft?
-Styopa
"...Dawn will be the first science mission powered by electric ion propulsion, the world's most advanced and efficient space propulsion technology."
Oh?
The asteroid belt isn't really all that crowded.
I found a scientific american article that has some interesting bits.
Last October, My children and I attended a great NASA sponsored presentation about the Dawn mission given by John Ristvey of MCREL that had was very entertaining, and had wonderful participation activities for the kids. He had one activity where he had kids holding various fruit to illustrate differences in the asteroids. One was a grapefruit (large, smooth, has moisture) another, a raisin (small, irregular, dry). It's a great presentation suitable for your scout, science, or astronomy group. At the time, you could enter your name on the Dawn mission website to be included on a ROM?? that will be sent on the probe. It looks like you could contact him here to see if they can present in your area: http://www.mcrel.org/about/staffDir/request.asp?st affID=80
There's several different types of ion engies. The Dawn mission is using electrostatic ion thrusters of the same design from the Deep Space 1 mission. The Smart-1 mission, and I'm pretty sure the Hayabusa mission as well, used Hall effect ion thrusters. The differences are small and each has a few advantages and disadvantages. So the submitter would have technically been more correct if they said "electrostatic" instead of "electric." The parent's link also has links to descriptions of each type.
Additionally:
Deep Space 1 was primarily a technology demonstrator mission. It carried a few instruments, but these were also prototypes.
Smart-1 was a combined technology demonstrator / science mission.
Hayabusa has both an ion thruster and hypergolic chemical rockets.
No space launch is ever "routine." While the world (especially the Russians and the US) are roughly fifty years past the days of rockets usually exploding rather than flying, there is still a great deal of risk involved whether the payload is a satellite for cable tv, a manned mission to orbit the Earth or even a robotic mission to another celestial body.
People seem to forget the number of failures exploring Mars. The Americans lost the Observer, the Climate Orbiter, Deep Space 2, and the Polar Lander since 1990. The Russians lost Mars 96. The Euros lost Beagle 2 -- all of which offset the spectacular successes of the Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, and the Mars Reconnaisance Observer. So yeah, it's "routine" all right to travel the vast distance from Earth and explore the nearest planetary body.
Space is, in fact, far from routinely explored.
I believe you could make a distinction between science and technology missions.
But they are slicing thin to create new "firsts" in general. Being the first to orbit asteroids in the *main belt* is also kind of a yawner because Eros, outside the belt, was also orbited IIRC. Being inside the belt is almost like saying, "Pioneer X is the first probe to pass Jupiter while Earth was between a 30 and 50 degrees angle relative to the Sun". It is easy to make up records and firsts if you combine enough factors. Sports announcers do similar stuff: "Dribbley Dunkor was the first point-guard over 6-foot-4-inches to score more than 25 points with a broken big toe before the all-star break!"
Table-ized A.I.
It is not the first to visit an asteroid, but it is the first to visit a dwarf planet and the first to orbit objects in the main asteroid belt.
It is not the first to orbit two targets, but it is the first to orbit two targets other than Earth. In fact, the only other mission that comes to mind as having orbited two objects is the ESA Smart-1 mission.
It is not the first to use an ion drive, but it is the first science mission to use an electrostatic ion drive.
None of these are major firsts, but they are among the many unique points of the mission. It's far from the level of baseball where the announcers come up with stuff like "first left-handed, national league 2nd baseman to have more than 5 steals on the road in a stadium over 2000 feet elevation before the All-Star break while using Addidas cleats." Also, the submitter never made any claims about the international significance of the mission, but since you apparently want to raise the point, the US does remain the most active nation by a significant margin in space exploration. Lastly, there are plenty of slashdotter's more interested in this sort of thing than the mainstream press. If you follow space news sites, you'll see this mission has been getting fairly regular mention. It's not a media-darling like the Mars rovers, but it's a lot more interesting than the ISS crew tossing a worn out Russian spacesuit overboard with a radio inside, which also got discussed here.