An artist's rendering of the Dawn spacecraft with Ceres(right) and 4 Vesta in the background
The Dawn Mission, with its spacecraft being launched on September 27, 2007, is a NASA-sponsored mission that has the primary purpose of gathering information on the protoplanets Ceres and Vesta, two celestial bodies found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Dawn Mission was motivated by NASA’s desire to learn more about our early solar system and the processes that occurred during its formation and shortly thereafter. Ceres and Vesta were selected as targets for the Dawn Mission because they are the most massive of the protoplanets inhabiting our solar system’s asteroid belt, are relatively intact and unchanged from their formation during our solar system’s youth, and are examples of the varied effects of planetary evolution as caused by different evolutionary processes. The Dawn Mission’s purpose and goals are interlocked and based on the study of Ceres and Vesta. NASA cites three driving forces that have given purpose to the Dawn Mission, and these three forces are considered the basic and overall goals of the mission. In studying Ceres and Vesta, the Dawn Mission is expected to: 1. Provide information about the earliest moments immediately following the origin of our solar system, so as to help us to better understand the conditions under which Ceres and Vesta formed. 2. Determine the nature of the primary components from which the terrestrial planets (which are similar to Ceres and Vesta) formed, so as to help us to better understand terrestrial planet formation. 3. Allow us to contrast the formation and evolution of two protoplanets that evolved via significantly different evolutionary paths, so as to help us to understand the different processes that dictate planetary evolution. These three driving forces and individual goals come together to define the Dawn Mission’s overall goal. According to NASA, this goal is to clarify and improve understanding on the conditions and processes of the solar system’s earliest years through the investigation of the largest remaining intact protoplanets.