NASA Spacecraft First to Orbit Dwarf Planet

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has begun orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The space agency confirmed Friday that Dawn, the first to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet, was captured by the planet's gravity at 1239 UTC, about 61,000 kilometers from Ceres’ surface. Almost an hour later, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory received a signal from Dawn that it was "healthy and thrusting with its ion engine,"...

© La Voix de l'Amérique - vendredi 6 mars 2015