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Success - NASA Delta 2 Rocket Lifts Dawn into Space

A NASA Delta 2 rocket blasted into space early Thursday, kicking off an unprecedented mission to explore the two largest asteroids in the solar system. 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.

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.

Bloomberg

Posted by | Thu, Sep 27, 2007 - 11:33 AM