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Dawn is a robotic NASA spacecraft tasked with the exploration and study of Vesta and Ceres, the two largest members of the asteroid belt.
Launched on September 27, 2007, the probe entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011.
Dawn left Vesta on September 5, 2012, on a course for Ceres, which it is scheduled to reach in February 2015.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dawn is NASA’s first purely exploratory mission to use ion propulsion. The spacecraft was constructed with some European cooperation, with components contributed by partners in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Dawn was the first spacecraft to visit Vesta, and is scheduled to be the first to visit Ceres. If it successfully reaches Ceres, it will also be the first spacecraft to orbit two separate extra terrestrial bodies, using ion thrusters to travel between its targets. Previous multi-target missions using conventional drives, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys.
