The End of Dawn

One day after the ending of the Kepler spacecraft mission, the Dawn spacecraft mission came to an end on October 31st when it ran out of fuel.

Animation of the Dawn spacecraft - NASA.

The Dawn spacecraft had a very different mission than Kepler. Kepler identified exoplanets in other solar systems while Dawn spent time closely studying asteroids in our solar system. Dawn took a very close look at Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt.

Vesta as viewed by the Dawn spacecraft - NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Super cool! All good missions must come to an end, but that just makes room for new missions to discover new things in the Universe!