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Dawn arrives in Florida<br />NASA NEWS RELEASE<br />Posted: April 10, 2007<br /><br />The Dawn spacecraft arrived at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., at 9 a.m. EDT today. Dawn, NASA's mission into the heart of the asteroid belt, is at the facility for final processing and launch operations. Dawn's launch period opens June 30. <br /><br />"Dawn only has two more trips to make," said Dawn project manager Keyur Patel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "One will be in mid-June when it makes the 15-mile journey from the processing facility to the launch pad. The second will be when Dawn rises to begin its eight-year, 3.2-billion-mile odyssey into the heart of the asteroid belt." <br /><br />The Dawn spacecraft will employ ion propulsion to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. <br /><br />Now that Dawn has arrived at Astrotech near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, final prelaunch processing will begin. Technicians will install the spacecraft's batteries, check out the control thrusters and test the spacecraft's instruments. In late April, Dawn's large solar arrays will be attached and then deployed for testing. In early May, a compatibility test will be performed with the Deep Space Network used for tracking and communications. Dawn will then be loaded with fuel to be used for spacecraft control during the mission. Finally, in mid-May, the spacecraft will undergo spin-balance testing. Dawn will then be mated to the upper stage booster and installed into a spacecraft transportation canister for the trip to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This is currently scheduled for June 19, when it will be mated to the Delta II rocket at Pad 17-B. <br /><br />The rocket that will launch Dawn is a Delta II 7925-H manufactured by the United Launch Alliance; it is a heavier-lift model of the standard Delta II that uses larger solid rocket boosters. The first stage is scheduled to be er <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>