After a hibernation of about six months, the science instruments on board NASA's Dawn spacecraft have been "wakened up" for the May approach and July arrival at Vesta, Dawn's first port of call in the asteroid belt, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said on Monday.
"Last week, we gently 'woke up' Dawn's three science instruments, which typically spend most of their time sleeping during the three-and-a-half-year journey to Vesta," said Robert Mase, Dawn Project Manager at JPL in Pasadena, Los Angeles.
"This activity confirms that Dawn is on track for the first close examination of one of the last unexplored worlds of the inner solar system," Mase said.
The reactivated instruments include the framing cameras which look into the stars, the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, which investigates surface mineralogy, and the gamma ray and neutron detector, which detects elemental composition, JPL said.
The international team of Dawn scientists and engineers in Germany and the United States spent three days interacting with the camera system, confirming the excellent health of the mechanical and electrical components and updating the software, according to JPL.
The framing camera activities were led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg- Lindau, Germany. "The camera system is working flawlessly. The dry run was a complete success," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera, based at the Institute.
In the months to come, the camera system will provide images needed to navigate the spacecraft to its rendezvous with Vesta, and will begin to image the asteroid's surface, JPL said.
These early images on approach will be the start of a campaign to systematically map Vesta's surface in detail and will provide tantalizing clues as to its mineralogical composition. In addition, the framing cameras will search for moons in Vesta's vicinity and look for evidence of past volcanic activity.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.