Washington, Oct 10 (Xinhua) The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Dawn spacecraft successfully completed the first test of its ion propulsion system over the weekend, according to mission status updates.
The system is vital to the success of Dawn’s eight-year, 1.6-billion-km journey to asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres.
“Dawn is our baby and over the weekend it took some of its first steps,” said project manager Keyur Patel of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We have two months more of checkout and characterisation remaining before Dawn is considered mission operational, but this is a great start.”
Members of the Dawn mission control team have been sending up commands and checking out spacecraft systems ever since its successful launch Sep 27.
The first test firing of one of Dawn’s three ion engines was completed late Saturday, and immediately after that the ion propulsion system began thrusting.
Dawn’s ion engines are extremely frugal powerhouses. The first 27 hours of thrusting from the ion engine resulted in the consumption of less than 0.28 kg of the spacecraft’s xenon fuel supply – less than the contents of a can of soda. Dawn’s fuel tank carries 425 kg of xenon propellant.
Over their lifetime, Dawn’s three ion propulsion engines will fire cumulatively for about 50,000 hours (over five years) – a record for a spacecraft.
Dawn will begin its exploration of asteroid Vesta in 2011 and the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. By utilising the same set of instruments at two separate destinations, scientists can more accurately formulate comparisons and contrasts.