Tue, Sep 25, 2007
Weather Keeps Probe On Pad Monday; Window Runs Out Soon
NASA has scheduled the space probe Dawn for its much-delayed
launch this Thursday. Dawn will be sent on an eight-year mission to
unlock the secrets of the solar system and how it was born.
Initial exploration targets are Ceres and Vesta, the two largest
asteroids orbiting the sun, in the asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter. Lift-off is scheduled between 0720 and 0749 Thursday,
after clouds prevented NASA from fueling the probe's launch booster
this weekend.
Dawn is scheduled to spend eight months orbiting Vesta in
October 2011, then move on to a rendezvous with Ceres in February
2015 -- traveling a total distance of over three- billion
miles.
As ANN has reported, Dawn has
become somewhat a poster child for mission delays.
The mission was cancelled in 2003, then reinstated the following
year. NASA then announced the mission was in "stand down mode" in
the fall of 2005, called it "indefinitely postponed" in January
2006, then cancelled it two months later blaming budget overruns
and, of all things, delays. Then, after howls of protest from the
scientific community, Dawn was officially back on less than a month
later.
The probe was scheduled for a launch this year on June 20... but
delays getting parts slipped that to June 30. A broken crane,
competing launch priorities, and a wrench dropped into the
spacecraft by a worker conspired to delay the mission further, and
here we are.
If Dawn isn't launched in the next few weeks, the asteroids
which are its primary exploration targets will have moved out of
its range.
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