Date: September 13th 2007

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

-end-

To subscribe to the list, send a message to: ksc-subscribe@newsletters nasa gov To remove your address from the list, send a message to: ksc-unsubscribe@newsletters nasa gov

The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list: [list_name]

using the following email: example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL:

http://www aus-city com/cgi-bin/dada/mail cgi/u/[list]/

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

http://www aus-city com/cgi-bin/dada/mail cgi/list/[list]

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: