09.24.07
Launch of NASA's Dawn spacecraft is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 27, from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch window is from 7:20 to 7:49 a.m. EDT. The launch was delayed 24 hours when weather prevented technicians from completing the loading of fuel on the Delta rocket's second stage.
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| The Dawn spacecraft is lifted alongside the mobile service tower on Launch Pad 17-B. At the top, Dawn will be prepared for mating with the awaiting Delta II rocket. |
"From here, the only way to go is up," said Dawn project manager Keyur Patel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. "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 two of the largest asteroids, Ceres and Vesta. 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.
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