2001–2012: Planetary Exploration Becomes Persistent
Dawn
First spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies.
Era 4 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- year known only: 2007
- Lead / partner
- United States
- Target
- Vesta / Ceres
- Category
- Dwarf planet / asteroid orbiter
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- Delta II 7925HD-327
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- Ceres
Why it happened
Dawn flew during 2001–2012: Planetary Exploration Becomes Persistent, as part of United States's work toward vesta / ceres. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
The full narrative of this mission is pending research and writing. What is recorded so far: First spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies.
Results
First spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- Image credit: NASA · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-24)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog