FSHOD - Fearlessly Seeking Honest Open Disclosure

The Ion-Powered Dawn

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NASA's Dawn mission is set for launch on September 27, 2007 with a launch window of 7:20AM to 7:49AM EDT. You can watch the launch of Dawn's Delta II rocket on NASA TV.

The Dawn mission will launch an exploratory spacecraft to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to investigate two vastly different 'protoplanets'...Ceres and Vesta. Ceres, named after the Roman goddess of agriculture,is the largest asteroid and the first to be discovered. Vesta, named after the Roman goddess of the hearth, is the only asteroid visible with the naked eye. For more information on these asteroids, their discovery and on Bode's Law go to NASA's Dawn Mission Background page



The goal of Dawn's mission is to study these two asteroids and provide information that scientists will use to further our knowledge of conditions and processes relevant to the formation and evolution of the Solar System...but then that is NASA's standard line, right?

One of the 'firsts' achieved by the Dawn mission is the use of Ion Propulsion (and NO!...we are not propulsing FSHOD member Ion (Iontruo2) out of the spacecraft!). Ion Propulsion provides approximately ten times the acceleration of chemical rockets and, therefore, is more efficient. It will be used after the Delta II rocket has completed it's task to send Dawn on it's way to Vesta.



Here's a brief timeline of Dawn's mision:

Launch - Summer 2007
Mars gravity assist - March 2009
Vesta arrival - September 2011
Vesta departure - April 2012
Ceres arrival - February 2015
End of primary mission -July 2015

So this mission totals 8 years. Of course, I wonder what happens to Dawn after 2015?

The Seven Sisters link

In the previous blog, there was a brief discussion between Ion and I about synchonicity and the Seven Sisters label used in the naming of
"cave skylights" on a picture from Mars. Well, here's another connection, Ion.

According to Dr. Marc D. Rayman, approximately 2 hours afer Dawn's Launch, observers in either Alaska or Hawaii should be able to see Dawn draw a line through the Pleiades, M45...otherwise knows as The Seven Sisters. Go here for more information.

Finally, here is a 13 minute Dawn Mission Video narrated by Leonard Nimoy. I know...it's NASA, the people who have paved the way in developing space-animation technology (rather than actually putting PEOPLE in space or telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing BUT the truth!)...but it's an OK video.

Regardless, it would be stupid to do less than wish the best for the Dawn mission and Good Luck! to the teams of scientists and engineers and paper-pushers who are making this happen, their organizations represented here on the Mission Patch.



Links used in this blog:
DAWN Mission site - http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
NASA TV - http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
Mission Video - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5412000236766165719&hl=en
Ceres .gif - http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/anim_ceres.gif
Vesta .mov - http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/video/vesta.mov
Background page - http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/background.asp
Ion Propulsion - http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp
Dawn Video - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5412000236766165719&hl=en

Labels: Ceres, Dawn, Ion Propulsion, NASA, Vesta