The long-awaited voyage of NASA’s Dawn space probe to rendezvous with a pair of small worlds in the asteroid belt launched at 7:34 a.m. EDT this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The probe will encounter Mars in 2009 to use the Red Planet’s gravity in a sling-shot maneuver for the trek into the asteroid belt for reconnaissance of the massive asteroid Vesta in 2011 and dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Scientists want up-close studies of these two diverse objects to learn more about the processes and conditions during the solar system’s formation four-and-a-half-billion years ago.
Dawn Mission Home Page