Ceres Seen From NASA's Dawn Spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDANASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The angrite parent body was likely similar in size to the asteroid Vesta, which has been studied up close by NASA’s Dawn mission. Vesta is roughly 525 kilometers (326 miles) in diameter.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres, the most massive body in the asteroid belt. Dawn is the first mission to visit a dwarf planet -- a round body that orbits the sun but, unlike a planet, does not clear its orbital path of other objects. Image credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system’s earliest chapter.
Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennae trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.
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https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news-detail.html?id=7275