NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, a low-thrust mission leveraging the prior experienceof NASA’s Deep Space 1 spacecraft, was launched in September 2007 on amission to investigate the large asteroids Vesta and Ceres. This paper providesa brief overview of the Dawn attitude control subsystem, describes the challengesfaced by the small flight team during the mission so far, and offers afew lessons learned. Special attention will be given to experiences realizedfrom flying a low-thrust mission under tight margins for missed thrust, reactionwheel momentum management while operating under solar-electric propulsion,the recent Mars Gravity Assist, and planning for the upcoming encounter withVesta in 2011.
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