An article yesterday from space.com discussed the launch of Dawn (seen above), a spacecraft which will discover secrets of planetary formation from asteroids Vesta and Ceres. The principal investigator for Dawn, Chris Russell, has been working on this project since 1992, when he envisioned the mission using its efficient ion drive. 15 years later, Dawn has survived pretty much every delay possible. From solar array dings to weather delays to rocket booster and launch tracking issues, the mission's current cost is about $357.5 million.
Dawn will held for a February 2009 flyby of Mars before it reaches its first target, the rocket asteroid Vesta, in August 2011. The probe's Xenon ion propulsion system (as seen above) will guide it into orbit around Vesta for about a year, before sending it to the icy dwarf planet Ceres (the largest space rock in the asteroid belt, seen below) in February 2015. "The spacecraft is safe, it is healthy and there's not a single [major] issue aboard," said Keyur Patel, the project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, after the successful launch. By Friday morning, Dawn is expected to have passed the orbit of the moon as it continues to fly toward the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. "Every time we launch a spacecraft, they all have their own personalities," Patel said, "And what we're about to discover is what kind of personality Dawn has; whether it's going to be a well-behaved child, or someone that's slightly naughty."
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