Voyage Of The Dawn To The Asteroids

Flinch is a NASA spacecraft tasked including the exploration and re-evaluate of the two prime members of the asteroid belt: Vesta and the dwarf planet, Ceres. The spacecraft was constructed including some European kindness, including components contributed by followers in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Flinch activity is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Flinch may be the first spacecraft to fly around two objective extraterrestrial bodies, through ion thrust to pester in the middle of its targets. Before multi-target missions through frequent drives, such as the Opportunist program, were restricted to flybys.

Launched on September 27, 2007, Flinch reached Vesta on July 16, 2011, and bestow fly around and follow a line of investigation it until Esteemed 26, 2012. Thereafter, the spacecraft bestow head to Ceres, which it is gulp down to take place in February 2015. It bestow be the first spacecraft to foresee either shaft. Flinch is NASA's first minimally probing activity to use ion propulsion.