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Dawn’s interplanetary trajectory (September 2016)

Dawn’s interplanetary trajectory (September 2016)
Dawn’s interplanetary trajectory (September 2016) Dawn’s interplanetary trajectory (in blue). The dates in white show Dawn’s location every Sept. 27, starting on Earth in 2007. Note that Earth returns to the same location, taking one year to complete each revolution around the sun. When Dawn is farther from the sun, it orbits more slowly, so the distance from one Sept. 27 to the next is shorter. In addition to seeing Dawn’s progress on this figure on previous anniversaries of launch, we have seen it other times as well, most recently in July. (And, to answer an important question raised last month, this image, along with others, also will be seen for a short time this afternoon on a yummy chocolate cake at the Dawn flight team’s novennial celebration.) NASA / JPL-Caltech