Dr. Marc Rayman, Chief JPL Scientist for the DAWN Interplanetary Mission spoke Wednesday, May 11, 2016. The Dinner Meeting was held at the Flight Path Learning Center & Museum.
The JPL Dawn Mission to the Asteroid belt won the highly prestigious Collier award as the most significant American Aerospace Achievement in 2015.
Launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It is currently in orbit about its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies, the first spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres, and also the first to visit a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres in March 2015.