This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres (lower right). Dawn travels through space using a technology called ion propulsion, in which ions are accelerated out of an engine, giving the spacecraft thrust. The xenon ions glow with blue light.

Dawn's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.