Dawn - mission in the asteroid belt

On April 23, the Dawn (Rassvet) interplanetary probe reached an orbit of an altitude of 13,500 km around the dwarf planet Ceres. Here, the work of the spacecraft will last until about mid-May, after which the height of the orbit is planned to be gradually reduced in order to get more opportunities for data collection.

The launch of the vehicle was made from Cape Canaveral by the American Delta-2 launch vehicle in 2007. Since then, Dawn managed to visit one of the largest asteroids in the solar system - Vesta.

The study of this celestial body took a whole year from the “Dawn” team, after which it was headed for Ceres. Reaching the dwarf planet, Dawn became the first and so far the only spacecraft to be in an elliptical orbit around two celestial bodies in a row. He was allowed to do this by a special device of the propulsion system.
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The device is equipped with three ion engines, the fuel of which is the noble gas xenon. Only one of them can work at the same time. A feature of these engines is the exceptionally high fuel efficiency. Using all 425 kilograms of xenon on board, the unit can continuously accelerate for 2,100 days. The resulting craving (91 millinewton) is so weak that at NASA it is often compared to the weight of a sheet of paper. However, summing up over a long time, this force is capable of accelerating the device to enormous speeds, which, together with gravitational maneuvers, becomes a very effective tool in the study of deep space.

Officially, the Rassvet mission ends in July 2015. The device will spend the remaining lifetime in orbit around Ceres. His tasks will be photographing the surface of the dwarf planet in the visible and infrared ranges, as well as the study of the gravitational field and gamma rays.

8 years ago, shortly before the start of the mission, NASA created a video about the reasons that prompted scientists to launch a spacecraft into the asteroid belt, one of the most mysterious regions of the Solar System.

You can watch the video by clicking on the link .

PS In the comments you can offer an interesting video for translation and dubbing.