While people on Earth celebrated Halloween, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft quietly gave up the ghost.
The spacecraft, which explored two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt missed its last two check-ins, one on October 31st and another on November 1st. Without a signal from the spacecraft, NASA engineers concluded that Dawn had finally run out of fuel, officially ending its mission.
The people working on the project knew this day was coming. In June they put it into its closest orbit yet around the dwarf planet Ceres, knowing that it only had a few months of fuel left. Though it was anticipated, the end of the mission was still emotional.
“The fact that my car’s license plate frame…
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/1/18053366/nasa-dawn-spacecraft-dead