NASA’s Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt successfully ended when it ran out of hydrazine, a critical fuel used for spacecraft orientation. The spacecraft relied on the hydrazine it carried from Earth, and when it ran out, it could no longer communicate with Earth as it couldn’t point its antennas accurately. Despite efforts to reestablish contact through various Deep Space Network stations, mission managers concluded that recovery was unlikely. Consequently, NASA officially announced the end of the Dawn mission shortly after.
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