Scientific American provides a timely update on NASA'a Dawn mission. Dawn is the first multi-destination probe to conduct missions of exploration within the Solar System.
What about the Voyager missions? Well, apparently since they headed out toward the interstellar regions of space, their missions don't count.
NASA launched the Dawn mission in September 2007. The probe just made a flyby over Mars in February, using Mars' gravity to slingshot itself toward the asteroid belt, where Dawn will explore two large bodies: Vesta and Ceres.
Dawn will actually orbit Vesta for six months starting around August 2011 before departing and moving on to Ceres, where it should arrive in 2012. After mapping Ceres Dawn will remain in orbit around the small planetoid/asteroid until some new mission can be devised for it. If left alone, the probe might orbit Ceres for up to 20 years.
Dawn uses a new Ion propulsion system that will accelerate the probe to a speed of about 11km/sec (about 6.6 miles/sec, I think). How fast is that compared to things we know about? Well, it's faster than a speeding bullet -- perhaps 10 times as fast as a speeding bullet, for what it's worth.
BTW -- that Scientific American article contains a fascinating video which reminds me of the "Genesis Project" video from the movie "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". The article compares the Dawn probe's mission to Star Trek's missions of exploration. What really distinguishes Dawn from previous interplanetary missions is the fact that the probe will enter into orbit around more than one body -- that has never been done before.
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