Talk:Dawn (spacecraft)

Gallery
What's with the gallery of random images? A gallery needs to contribute something to the article, per WP:IG. If a reader just wants more photos of Ceres and Vesta, they can go to the Ceres and Vesta articles. It's pointless to repeat them all here. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * (I renamed the section). Let's come to a consensus now that we have pending changes applied to the article.  Do we need this gallery or not?  Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:47, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * What purpose does it serve? What value does it provide the reader, to justify the longer download time for people with slow connections, as in much of the world?  We already have approach series of imgs under the Vesta and Ceres sections, as well as comparisons to Hubble images.  The gallery just has photos we don't need in the article.  AFAICT, they're just leftovers:  images we once used, and later replaced with others that were more useful.  I suppose we could provide a link to a Commons category of Dawn images, if someone feels that would be useful.  — kwami (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * A link to the relevant Commons category is a good alternative. Jonathunder (talk) 23:40, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * As of now, this article has 2 separate sections displaying several images of its approach to Ceres. I think it is excessive. BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Science phase to start in April 23
The probe will settle into the desired orbit on April 23rd, and will start its science phase. But the new imaging and data on the bright spots is expected to flow by early May: Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 15:16, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * FYI, Dawn Journal 3/31 warns "colors of the orbits here are only approximate". — kwami (talk) 01:54, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Dawn website
Can this NASA Dawn website be added to the infobox? http://www.nasa.gov/dawn Thank you,Jcardazzi (talk) 01:32, 12 May 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi
 * Kept both NASA website URL as well as NASA JPL Website URL. Thanks! Ninney (talk) 01:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Was the Dawn time scedule influenced by cosmic rays?
In this edit (from April 17) you added information to the Ceres article, that I think would be more relevant to this one. What source did you have? Do you think that you could make a sourced and somewhat more precise statement in this article about this incidence?

I'm particularly interested in whether your sources indicate that actually the inertia of a cosmic ray impact shifted the velocity vector of Dawn sufficiently to cause the trouble, or whether it just was an effect on the electronics. Cheers, JoergenB (talk) 20:18, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * My original source was a small footnote in an article by Phil Plait, but this article should explain it similarly. Essentially a cosmic ray hit the spacecraft, causing certain electrical systems to malfunction. The resulting delay in the ion thruster's activity slowed its approach to Ceres, having to make a more difficult approach. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:06, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Updated dates, gutted gallery
Updated orbit dates that had been disrupted.

Gutted the Ceres gallery. It was getting ridiculous: this article is supposed to be about the spacecraft. We don't need to show every image it ever took. I cut down to the first global map. A few more illustrative images would be fine, but what we have for Vesta is about the maximum we should have for Ceres -- even Vesta is a bit much, but I left it alone because it wasn't egregious. Remember, people need to wait for all these images to download when they view the article, and on poor connections that could take a long time for no real benefit. — kwami (talk) 19:33, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

References to long video/talks as sources should specify a time offset
A 92 minute youtube video of a speech is ref'd a few times, but it's not specific enough to verify the claims/facts. We need time offsets, or preferably a searchable text source. - Rod57 (talk) 10:48, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Gravity assist and delta-V
The interesting thing about the gravity assist at Mars would be how much delta-V it gave Dawn, not the insignificant effect it had on Mars. Delta-V requirements, and how they were met, would be interesting for this mission - but we are only told what the ion drive provided ? - Rod57 (talk) 10:55, 3 November 2020 (UTC)