Dawn Spacecraft Leaving Huge Asteroid Vesta Next Week

by SPACE.com Staff

Date: 30 August 2012 Time: 01:36 PM ET

NASA's Dawn probe is gearing up to depart the giant asteroid Vesta next week and begin the long trek to the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

The Dawn spacecraft is slated to leave Vesta on the night of Sept. 4 (early morning Sept. 5 EDT), ending a 14-month stay at the 330-mile-wide (530 kilometers) body. The journey to Ceres should take roughly 2.5 years, with Dawn reaching the dwarf planet in early 2015, researchers said.

"Thrust is engaged, and we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions," Dawn chief engineer and mission director Marc Rayman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We are feeling somewhat wistful about concluding a fantastically productive and exciting exploration of Vesta, but now have our sights set on dwarf planet Ceres."

Solar Activity + Start To Summer 2012

There has recently been a large amount of hype and global media reports surrounding the sun entering a new Maunder/Dalton minimum type state.

Having looked into this in more depth, the bulk of it appears to stem from claims in regard to the quadrupole/quadrupolar sun from the Japanese Astronomical society and international media reports dated from as early as 20^th April 2012.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201204200075

The important factors that I have gathered from this information is that:

According to the Japanese Astronomical society, the magnetic shifts in the sun replicate those that occurred during the “little ice age” when the River Thames used to freeze over in London. Their data suggests that the sun is about to enter a period of reduced solar activity/hibernation, even though the exact opposite is meant to be happening, and in accordance with the professional and scientific predictions to date.

Although this is nothing new in terms of the claims that I have been consistently making in regard to our future weather and climate, it is further weighting towards my scientific suggestions and personal methodology. There are also far easier methods of arriving at this conclusion before the release of this scientific information from the Japanese Astronomical society.

These changes have also occurred much earlier than the leading scientists/professional bodies were anticipating.

I published the following information in an update on the 27^th February 2012 (several weeks before the release of this information from the Japanese Astronomical society).

Curiosity Rover First Colour 360 Panorama
Original Photo : NASA JPL- Caltech

Interactive panorama conversion: Hans Nyberg - Panoramas.dk Note that more sky has been added artificially by me in this interactive version.

This 360-degree panorama was released Aug 27 2012.

It includes the highest part of Mount Sharp which is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the rover.

The colors on this panorama are enchanced to give the same colors as it would have under lights on earth.