(CNN) NASA's Dawn spacecraft has run out of fuel and dropped out of contact with mission control, the agency said Thursday.

This ends the spacecraft's 11-year mission, which sent it on a 4.3 billion-mile journey to two of the largest objects in our solar system's main asteroid belt. Dawn visited Vesta and Ceres , becoming the first spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations.

Dawn missed two communication sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network the past two days, which means it has lost the ability to turn its antennae toward the Earth or its solar panels toward the sun. The end of the mission is not unexpected, as the spacecraft has been low on fuel for some time.

It's the second historic NASA mission this week to run out of fuel and come to an end, as NASA's Kepler Space Telescope did Tuesday.

"Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission -- its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system."

Read More</s>NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending an 11-year-old historic mission to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, the US space agency said.

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network on October 31 and November 1.

After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel which keeps the spacecraft oriented and in communication with Earth, NASA said in a statement late on Thursday.

"Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission - its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us, and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

"The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system," Zurbuchen added.

Dawn can no longer keep its antennas trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

Currently, it's in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it will remain for decades, NASA said.

Launched in 2007, Dawn accomplished a journey propelled by ion engines that put about 4.3 billion miles (6.9 billion km) on its odometer.

In 2011, Dawn became the first to orbit a body in the region between Mars and Jupiter when the spacecraft arrived at Vesta, the second largest world in the main asteroid belt.

In 2015, Dawn became the first to visit a dwarf planet and go into orbit around two destinations beyond Earth.

It went into orbit around Ceres, a dwarf planet that is also the largest world in the asteroid belt.

"The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time. It's hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it's time," said Marc Rayman, Mission Director and Chief Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).</s>An artist's rendering of the Dawn spacecraft, which launched in 2007.

The Dawn spacecraft launched 11 years ago to explore major bodies in the main asteroid belt including the dwarf planet Ceres has ended its mission, NASA said.

The vessel missed communications sessions with NASA on October 31 and November 1. Mission managers have concluded Dawn ran out of fuel required to allow the spacecraft to control pointing.

"The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time," said Marc Rayman, mission director and chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. "It's hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it's time."

Dawn launched in 2007, logging 4.3 billion miles. The spacecraft traveled to the main asteroid belt, exploring its two largest bodies: the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta. Dawn was the first space mission to successfully orbit two destinations, according to NASA.

"The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

NASA said the spacecraft is in orbit around Ceres, and will stay there for decades.

More: This NASA probe got closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft

More: Watch: NASA releases 450,000 gallons of water in one minute</s>Dawn, a NASA spacecraft that launched 11 years ago and studied two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, has ended its mission after running out of fuel, officials said Thursday.

Scientists have known for about a month that Dawn was essentially out of hydrazine, the fuel that kept the spacecraft’s antennae oriented toward Earth and helped turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

When the spacecraft missed scheduled communications with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday and Thursday, the space agency formally declared it dead.

“The fact that my car’s license plate frame proclaims, ‘My other vehicle is in the main asteroid belt,’ shows how much pride I take in Dawn,” said mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time. It’s hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it’s time.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the NASA science mission directorate in Washington, hailed Dawn’s “vital science” and “incredible technical achievements.”

Dawn became the only spacecraft ever to orbit a cosmic body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in 2011 when it began circling the asteroid Vesta.

Then it moved on to the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet and the only spacecraft to orbit one, NASA said.

It is expected to remain in orbit around Ceres for decades, but will no longer be able to communicate with Earth.

Zurbuchen said the scientific learning from Dawn’s mission will go on.

“The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system,” he said.

Dawn’s demise is the latest in a series of spacecraft troubles for NASA.

The Kepler space telescope ran out of fuel earlier this week, as expected, ending its nine and a half year mission of hunting for planets outside our solar system.

NASA’s Opportunity rover is stalled on the surface of Mars following a major dust storm that struck in late May and June.

The Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory experienced technical problems last month that have since been fully repaired.</s>It was only just yesterday that NASA announced its Kepler space telescope had officially been declared dead, and now there’s another long-running mission that has also met its demise. Today, NASA revealed that the Dawn spacecraft, which was studying some of the larger objects in our Solar System’s asteroid belt, has also run out of fuel.

The craft, which launched back in 2007, had already outlived its planned lifespan, so this news isn’t entirely unexpected, but the fact that it comes immediately after the death of the Kepler telescope is something of a sad coincidence.

The Dawn orbiter has been flying around the dwarf planet Ceres for some time now. Back in July, the machine shot back some really fantastic images of the surface of the tiny world:

Dawn’s engineers reported that it missed its scheduled communication check-ins two days in a row, and indicating that it had finally exhausted the supply of fuel that was projected to run dry as early as a couple of years ago. Now that it’s no longer capable of communicating, much less maneuvering, it is expected to remain in orbit around Ceres for decades or longer.

“Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission – its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us, and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement. “The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system.”

As NASA explains, the spacecraft has traveled an incredible distance during its 11+ years in space. By the time the spacecraft ran out of fuel it had around 4.3 billion miles under its belt.

The spacecraft itself may indeed be dead, but Dawn’s contribution to science is far from over. The incredible amount of data sent back by the craft during its many years in space still holds secrets that scientists hope to find in the coming years.</s>With no fuel left to point its antenna at Earth, NASA's Dawn mission to explore Vesta and Ceres has reached its conclusion after 11 remarkable years in space.

It has been an amazing ride. Short on fuel and now stationed in permanent orbit around dwarf planet 1 Ceres, the end has come for NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

"Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission," said Thomas Zurbuchen (NASA HQ) today in a press release. "The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system."

NASA engineers have said that the spacecraft, now depleted of fuel, will remain in a final elliptical orbit of just over 27 hours in duration, reaching a most distant point (apoapsis) from Ceres of 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers) and a closest periapsis approach of 22 miles (35 kilometers). This is in line with planetary protection protocols, guaranteeing Dawn won't crash into Ceres for the next few decades.

“Dawn's legacy is that it explored two of the last uncharted worlds in the inner Solar System,” says Marc Rayman (NASA-JPL) in a recent press release. “Dawn has shown us alien worlds that for two centuries were just pinpoints of light amidst the stars.”

The spacecraft missed two scheduled communications with Earth on October 31st and November 1st, leading mission scientists to conclude that the spacecraft had finally run out of fuel. Dawn will now remain permanently in orbit around Ceres, a testament to the pioneering spirit of space exploration. There were early proposals for a third flyby mission to asteroids 2 Pallas or 145 Adeona in 2019, which were scrapped in favor of remaining at Ceres for further exploration.

Dawn performed several firsts in space exploration: It was the first and only mission to visit both Vesta and Ceres, NASA's first deep space mission to use ion propulsion, and the first mission to orbit more than one target body beyond the Earth and Moon. Dawn was also the first mission to visit a dwarf planet, beating out New Horizons by just a few months, which made its historic flyby past Pluto and Charon in July 2015.

The problem comes down to a lack of hydrazine. Dawn's reaction wheels used for pointing the spacecraft failed earlier in the mission. Though the spacecraft uses three xenon-fueled ion engines for its main source of propulsion, its maneuvering thrusters depend on hydrazine. Without steering, Dawn will no longer be able to aim its main communications antenna back at the Earth.

Launched atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force station on September 27, 2007, Dawn required a series of long burns of its ion engines to slowly get up to speed. Dawn also performed a Mars flyby on February 17, 2009, giving engineers a chance to calibrate cameras and instruments en route to its main objectives in the asteroid belt.

Dawn arrived at 4 Vesta on July 16, 2011. Dawn revealed the misshapen world of Vesta in dramatic detail, mapping it from pole to pole while probing it from core to surface. One key finding from Dawn at Vesta was that it seems to be the last of its kind, a remnant of the rocky planetesimals from the early days of the solar system.

Dawn then fired up its ion engines and departed Vesta on September 5, 2012, for a 30-month transit, arriving at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

It turned out that the earlier exploration of Vesta was just a prelude for the excitement to come. On approach to Ceres, Dawn spotted several anomalous white patches on its surface. These proved to be briny salt deposits of hydrated magnesium sulfate and ammonia-rich clays, remnants of water eruptions from the world's interior.

Dawn gave us key insights into the cryovolcanic activity erupting on the surface of Ceres and a look at an active dwarf planet. Between Ceres and Vesta, Dawn explored about 45% (nearly half) of the mass of the main asteroid belt. Not bad!

“Although it will be sad to see Dawn's departure from our mission family, we are intensely proud of its many accomplishments,” says Lori Glaze (Planetary Science Division-NASA HQ) in a recent press release. “Dawn's science and engineering achievements will echo throughout history.”

The end of Dawn is just one of many endings in modern deep space exploration. Cassini wrapped up a decade and a half of exploration of Saturn last year on September 11, 2017. New Horizons will explore the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule on New Year's Day 2019 on a brief flyby before heading out of the solar system. And NASA's Juno spacecraft will finish up at Jupiter once it succumbs to radiation damage accumulated on successive perijove passes, probably in 2019.

Sadly, our eyes in the outer solar system are going dark. NASA's Europa Clipper in the 2022 to 2025 time frame, and perhaps one or a pair of Ice Giant Orbiters headed to Uranus and/or Neptune in the 2030s, will likely be the next outer solar system missions on the launch pad.

It's truly #DuskforDawn, and you can follow the final days of the mission via the same Twitter hashtag. It has been an amazing 11-year mission. Dawn has given planetary scientists key insights into the formation of the early solar system and data to pour over for years to come.</s>NASA has lost a second spacecraft this week, ending a fruitful mission in the asteroid belt.

Running low on fuel for some time, the Dawn spacecraft this week stopped communicating with flight controllers. Its prolonged silence prompted NASA to declare it dead Thursday, two days after delivering eulogies to the planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope. The 9 ½-year-old Kepler also ran out of fuel, needed for pointing the spacecraft.

They both kept working longer than anticipated and their demise had been expected.

Propelled by three ion engines, the 11-year-old Dawn was the first spacecraft to orbit an object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and also the first to orbit two places beyond Earth. After circling the asteroid Vesta, Dawn went into orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres.

Mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman insisted he wasn't sad. Rather, he said in an email, "I'm thrilled it was so fantastically exciting and productive. Dawn was a spectacular success by any measure. It carried humankind on a truly amazing deep space adventure with stunning discoveries."

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, followed by Vesta. The "astounding" images collected by Dawn are shedding light on the history and evolution of our solar system, said NASA's science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen.

Dawn should remain in orbit around Ceres for decades, according to NASA.

"To me, that is a fitting end to an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition," Rayman said.</s>NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system’s earliest chapter.

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday 31 October, and Thursday 1 November. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing.

Dawn can no longer keep its antennas trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

The Dawn spacecraft launched 11 years ago to visit the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt. Currently, it’s in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it will remain for decades.

“Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission – its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us, and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system.”

Dawn launched in 2007 on a journey that put about 6,9-billion km on its odometer. Propelled by ion engines, the spacecraft achieved many firsts along the way. In 2011, when Dawn arrived at Vesta, the second largest world in the main asteroid belt, the spacecraft became the first to orbit a body in the region between Mars and Jupiter. In 2015, when Dawn went into orbit around Ceres, a dwarf planet that is also the largest world in the asteroid belt, the mission became the first to visit a dwarf planet and go into orbit around two destinations beyond Earth.

“The fact that my car’s license plate frame proclaims, ‘My other vehicle is in the main asteroid belt,’ shows how much pride I take in Dawn,” says mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time. It’s hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it’s time.”

The data Dawn beamed back to Earth from its four science experiments enabled scientists to compare two planet-like worlds that evolved very differently. Among its accomplishments, Dawn showed how important location was to the way objects in the early solar system formed and evolved. Dawn also reinforced the idea that dwarf planets could have hosted oceans over a significant part of their history – and potentially still do.

“In many ways, Dawn’s legacy i¬s just beginning,” says princ¬¬ipal investigator Carol Raymond at JPL. “Dawn’s data sets will be deeply mined by scientists working on how planets grow and differentiate, and when and where life could have formed in our solar system. Ceres and Vesta are important to the study of distant planetary systems, too, as they provide a glimpse of the conditions that may exist around young stars.”

Because Ceres has conditions of interest to scientists who study chemistry that leads to the development of life, NASA follows strict planetary protection protocols for the disposal of the Dawn spacecraft. Dawn will remain in orbit for at least 20 years, and engineers have more than 99 percent confidence the orbit will last for at least 50 years.

So, while the mission plan doesn’t provide the closure of a final, fiery plunge – the way NASA’s Cassini spacecraft ended last year, for example – at least this is certain: Dawn spent every last drop of hydrazine making science observations of Ceres and radioing them back so we could learn more about the solar system we call home.

Pictured: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft turned science fiction into science fact by using ion propulsion to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. The spacecraft has run out of hydrazine, which keeps it oriented and in communication with Earth, thus ending the mission.

 Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 Watch this video on YouTube.</s>After 11 years, 4.3 billion miles (6.9 billion kilometers) and two planetary orbits, NASA’s Dawn mission has been declared over after the craft failed to communicate with Earth for two days in a row.

The 11-year mission to investigate “time capsules from the solar system’s earliest chapter” in the asteroid belt concluded after Dawn finally ran out of hydrazine fuel, which meant it could no longer turn to face Earth, to communicate, or the sun, to recharge.

The probe, currently in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, missed communications with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday and Thursday; and mission managers were forced to confirm the end of the mission.

“Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission – its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us, and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries,”said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system.”

Dawn was a mission of firsts, as it not only became the first spacecraft to orbit a celestial body between Mars and Jupiter (Vesta, the second-largest body in the main asteroid belt) but also the first to visit a dwarf planet and orbit two planetoids other than Earth.

“The fact that my car’s license plate frame proclaims, ‘My other vehicle is in the main asteroid belt,’ shows how much pride I take in Dawn,” said Mission Director and Chief Engineer Marc Rayman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time. It’s hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it’s time.”

Dawn’s four science experiments furthered humanity’s understanding of planet formation and showed that dwarf planets could once have hosted their own oceans, and may still. The craft will continue to orbit Ceres for at least 20 years, though many on the team put that number closer to 50. Strict planetary protection protocols govern how NASA can dispose of crafts like Dawn, as they do not want to interfere with the chemistry on Ceres.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!</s>NASA's Dawn spacecraft has finally run out of gas, bringing a successful 11-year mission to a close after orbiting the asteroid Vesta and then moving on trailblazing observations of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Word of its demise came just days after NASA announced that the Kepler space telescope met a similar fate.

Flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, knew the Dawn spacecraft was virtually out of propellant to keep its solar arrays pointed at the sun and for aiming its main antenna back at Earth. And sure enough, on Wednesday the spacecraft failed to make contact as scheduled.

Engineers quickly concluded Dawn had finally exhausted its supply of hydrazine fuel. It remains in a stable orbit around Ceres, but for all intents and purposes, the spacecraft is dead.

"The fact that my car's license plate frame proclaims 'my other vehicle is in the main asteroid belt' shows how much pride I take in Dawn," Marc Rayman, the mission director, said in a statement. "The demands we put on Dawn were tremendous, but it met the challenge every time. It's hard to say goodbye to this amazing spaceship, but it's time."

Carol Raymond, the mission's principal investigator, said the data and images beamed back by dawn over the course of its mission "will be deeply mined by scientists working on how planets grow and differentiate, and when and where life could have formed in our solar system."

"Ceres and Vesta are important to the study of distant planetary systems, too, as they provide a glimpse of the conditions that may exist around young stars," she said.

On Tuesday, NASA announced the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft had finally run out of propellant after a successful nine-and-a-half-year mission. But Dawn and Kepler operated long beyond their original design requirements, both awarded mission extensions because of the high value placed on their science observations.

Launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 27, 2007, Dawn used a low-power ion propulsion system to fly past Mars in 2009, using the red planet's gravity for a velocity boost, and slipped into orbit around Vesta in July 2011.

The spacecraft discovered that Vesta is where a specific variety of meteorites found on Earth originated after a huge impact in the distant past. The asteroid features a differentiated iron core, a silicate mantle and igneous rocks in its crust, along with carbon rich compounds that apparently were deposited by impacting bodies.

After more than a year of close-range observations, Dawn used its ion engine to leave Vesta behind in September 2012, reaching its second target -- Ceres -- in March 2015. The spacecraft found that Ceres, a dwarf planet like Pluto and the only such body in the asteroid belt, was once an ocean world where salts and other deposits indicating a watery past are now exposed on the surface.

"Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission, its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's science administrator. "The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system."
NASA's Dawn spacecraft exhausts all of its hydrazine fuel propellant and without a functioning maneuvering system enters into uncontrolled motion around dwarf planet Ceres, thus ending its 11-year mission.