09.11.07

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov 

George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
george.h.diller@nasa.gov 

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
david.c.agle@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 2007-099

DAWN ONE STEP AWAY FROM ASTEROID BELT TRIP

The Dawn spacecraft completed the 25-kilometer (15-mile) journey from 
Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., to Pad-17B of the 
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:10 a.m. EDT today. The launch 
period for Dawn, NASA's eight-year, more than 5-billion-kilometer 
(3.2-billion-mile) odyssey into the heart of the asteroid belt, opens 
Sept. 26.

"From here, the only way to go is up," said Dawn project manager Keyur 
Patel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We are 
looking forward to putting some space between Dawn and Mother Earth 
and making some space history."

Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the 
solar system's earliest epoch 4.5 billion years ago by investigating 
in detail the massive asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. They 
reside between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt. Scientists 
theorize these were budding planets never given the opportunity to 
grow. However, Ceres and Vesta each followed a very different 
evolutionary path during the solar system's first few million years. 
By investigating two diverse asteroids during the spacecraft's 
eight-year flight, the Dawn mission aims to unlock some of the 
mysteries of planetary formation. Dawn will be the first spacecraft 
to orbit an object in the asteroid belt and the first to orbit two 
bodies after leaving Earth. Recent images taken by NASA's Hubble 
Space Telescope raise further intriguing questions about the 
evolution of these asteroids.

Now that the Dawn payload is atop the Delta II 7925-H, a heavier-lift 
model of the standard Delta II that uses larger solid rocket 
boosters, a final major test will be conducted. This integrated test 
of the Delta II and Dawn working together will simulate all events as 
they will occur on launch day, but without propellants aboard the 
vehicle.

The Sept. 26 launch window is 4:25 to 4:54 a.m. PDT (7:25 to 7:54 a.m. 
EDT). Should the launch be postponed 24 hours for any reason, the 
launch window will extend from 4:20 to 4:49 a.m. PDT (7:20 to 7:49 
a.m. EDT). For a 48-hour postponement, the launch window will be from 
4:14 to 4:43 a.m. PDT (7:14 to 7:43 a.m EDT). Dawn's launch period 
closes Oct. 15.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for the NASA 
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The University of 
California Los Angeles is responsible for overall Dawn mission 
science. Other scientific partners include Los Alamos National 
Laboratory, New Mexico; German Aerospace Center, Berlin; Max Planck 
Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg, Germany; and Italian 
National Institute of Astrophysics, Palermo. Orbital Sciences 
Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft. 
The NASA Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center and the 
United Launch Alliance are responsible for the launch of the Delta 
II.

Additional information about Dawn is online at:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, 
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

	
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