Posted on 09/27/2007 1:10:44 PM PDT by saganite
A NASA probe blasted into space early Thursday, kicking off an unprecedented mission to explore the two largest asteroids in the solar system.
Riding atop a Delta 2 rocket, NASA's Dawn spacecraft launched toward the asteroids Vesta and Ceres at 7:34 a.m. EDT (1134 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
"In my view, we're going to be visiting some of the last unexplored worlds in the solar system," said Marc Rayman, Dawn director of system engineering at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
Dawn's eight-year mission will carry the 2,685-pound (1,212-kilogram) probe across three billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) on NASA's first sortie deep into the asteroid belt, a ring of space rocks that circles the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
By visiting the bright, rocky asteroid Vesta and the large, icy Ceres, researchers hope Dawn will shed new light on the formation of planets and solar system's early evolution.
Aside from a wayward ship, which delayed today's launch by 14 minutes when it encroached into the Atlantis Ocean splashdown zone for segments of Dawn's rocket, the liftoff went as planned, NASA launch director Omar Baez said.
Long journey ahead
Dawn is expected to rendezvous and orbit the 330-mile (530-kilometer) wide Vesta between August 2011 and May 2012, then move on to Texas-sized Ceres by February 2015. With its spherical shape and 585-mile (942-kilometer) diameter, Ceres is so large it is also considered a dwarf planet.
"It will be the first mission to journey to, and orbit around, two celestial bodies, and the first to visit a dwarf planet," said Dawn program manager Jim Adams, at NASA's Washington, D.C. headquarters, of the asteroid-bound flight.
Dawn carries an optical camera, gamma ray and neutron detector and a mapping spectrometer to study Vesta and Ceres. Some of those tools will get a trial run during a planned Mars flyby in 2009, researchers said.
To power those instruments, the spacecraft is also equipped with the most powerful solar arrays ever launched into deep space.
With a wingspan of nearly 65 feet (almost 20 meters), or about the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate on a baseball field, the arrays will generate more than 10 kilowatts near Earth, though that output will decrease as the spacecraft moves further from the Sun.
NASA officials set Dawn's mission cost at $357.5 million excluding the cost of its Delta 2 rocket, according to a September update. In a July briefing, Dawn researchers said the asteroid-bound flight could cost a total of $449 million and incur an extra $25 million in overhead due to launch delays.
Attempts to launch the mission in July were thwarted first by poor weather and rocket glitches, then by difficulties arranging ship and aircraft tracking equipment in time for liftoff. NASA also canceled the mission outright in March 2006, only to reinstate the expedition a few weeks later.
"It has been quite an emotional rollercoaster," Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles, said of the mission. "And part of the emotional rollercoaster is the gratitude that we have for all of the people that defended Dawn in those times."
An asteroid trek on ion power
Built by Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, the Dawn spacecraft has been touted as the Prius of space probes because of the uncanny fuel efficiency of its three-engine ion drive.
Dawn carries 937 pounds (425 kilograms) of Xenon gas, to which it gives an electric charge to create ions that are then catapulted out of its engines at nearly 90,000 miles per hour (144,840 kph). Over time, the ion push builds up, and allows Dawn to change its flight path to first rendezvous, then orbit, multiple targets like Vesta and Ceres without requiring massive amounts of conventional rocket fuel.
"The first time I ever heard of ion propulsion was in a 'Star Trek' episode," said Rayman, adding that such engines are also touted to propel the TIE fighters or Twin Ion Engine - of "Star Wars" fame. "Dawn does the TIE fighter one better because it has three ion engines."
While it will take Dawn four days to go from zero to 60 miles per hour (96 kph), the probe will gradually pick up speed as it fires its ion drive nonstop for the next six years, NASA has said, adding that the mission is the agency's first operational science expedition powered by ion propulsion.
"That would make it the longest powered flight in space history," said Keyur Patel, NASA's Dawn project manager at JPL, just before liftoff.
Each of the three ion engines weighs about 20 pounds (nine kilograms) and is about the size of a basketball.
"From such a little engine you can get this blue beam of rocket exhaust that shoots out at 89,000 miles per hour," Patel said before launch day. "It is a remarkable system."
Sorry, couldn't resist. It's the geek in me.
Westerners continue to explore the expanse of space...meanwhile, Muslims continue to sit in the dirt and perfect the science of the suicide belt.
The LIVE launch thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1902160/posts
1325 GMT (9:25 a.m. EDT)
“With the launch of Dawn, ULA is continuing to show its dedication to providing safe, cost-effective, reliable access to space for U.S. government missions,” said Mark Wilkins, vice president of Delta Programs at United Launch Alliance. “ULA has brought together the most talented professionals in the launch industry and we are honored to launch spacecraft, such as Dawn, supporting NASA’s critical national mission to explore the universe.”
The entire universe! but first, this here asteroid.
Interesting.
The best humor contains just a little bit of truth.
Did a search for Dawn and didn’t come up with the live thread. Seems to happen to me a lot!
The most exciting thing to me about this mission is the use of the Ion engine. First operational mission. Go baby go!
I don’t know how many ion motors have flown, but they seem to run forever and get no respect since they are quiet and low impact. Ion motor tech will open space to resource development once the Treaty is repealed.
Event Horizon
“Each of the three ion engines weighs about 20 pounds (nine kilograms) and is about the size of a basketball.”
I wonder how much ion’s cost per barrell....
Deep Space One was flown by NASA as a test bed which included proving the Ion Engine and the Japanese currently have Hayabusa on it’s return trip to Earth, hopefully with some asteroid soil samples. ESA flew one last year on a moon mission and in addition to those missions there are several ion engines performing on Earth satellites as station keeping thrusters.
Over a year ago I read an article about some Australian engineers and scientists who had developed a new ion thruster 10 times as efficient as the ones currently in use. Four times the thrust too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa
bump
Manned space flight as currently structured is an enormous waste of resources. NASA scientists have to beg to get missions like this one funded which will return actual science. Meanwhile we spend twice the total cost of Dawn every time we put the Shuttle up there to carry new parts and supplies to the ISS and go in circles. I’m looking forward to the private sector taking over manned flight and near earth exploration. At least it will be cost effective.
The Hyabusa ship has been lost and recovered several times. It should have disappeared a couple years ago, but the engineers have somehow kept it going. It wasn’t going to be possible to return to earth, but here it comes. This is a story of the impossible and would be dramatic if it weren’t happening so slowly and so far from earth and just a robot.
ping
The Mars Rovers are also still roving:
Spaceflightnow.com
Opportunity has descended the inner slope of the 800-meter-wide crater (half a mile wide) to a band of relatively bright bedrock exposed partway down. The rover is in position to touch a selected slab of rock with tools at the end of its robotic arm, after safety checks being commanded because the rover is at a 25-degree tilt. Researchers intend to begin examining the rock with those tools later this week.
I’ve kept track of the mission and it’s amazing the number of glitches and near disasters they have overcome to get it headed back this way. Here’s hoping they can bring it home.
I saw that too. Amazing little machines.
Okay. Then close NASA down and let some other people pick up the torch. We waste billions of dollars each year on this nonsense and we’re getting nowhere.
We could have been living on other planets by now. Instead we have developed some science that I’m not all that sure we couldn’t have lived without.
If it comes down to it, I’d rather have humans exploring and do with a little less science.
How many hundreds of billions of dollars are we going to burn through, while other nations develop plans to do what we have simply refused to do?
If you want the private sector to do it, then simply tell the feds you’re done. Pack it in.
I wouldn’t mind seeing JPL take control of NASA and NASA’s budget for a few years just to see how it goes. JPL at least seems to want to get into space.
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