NASA Dawn probe to set off on solar system discovery by Delia Cruceru

The space probe Dawn is set to be launched Thursday, announced NASA. The craft was postponed from Wednesday to Thursday due to weather issues and weekend fueling delays. Dawn will head towards the dwarf planets Ceres and Vesta, the two largest asteroids orbiting the sun, in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, to study how the solar system was born. The craft measures 1.64 meters (yards) long and 1.27 meters (yards) wide and it weights 747 kg. At first Dawn will orbit around Vesta in October 2011 then it will head to orbit Ceres in February 2015 traveling a total distance of 3.1 billion miles (5.1 billion kilometers). The second objective of the craft is to find out what kind of elements form terrestrial planets such as Earth, Mars, Mercury, Venus and Ceres. Vesta was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807 and it was named by the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth. Ceres was discovered at January 1, 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi and it was named after the Roman goddess Ceres-the goddess of growing plants, the harvest, and of motherly love. Dawn will be equipped with ion propulsion engines that use electrical charge to accelerate ions from xenon fuel, consuming little fuel. It will also carry a high definition camera and two spectrometers.

related story: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070924/tsc-us-space-astronomy-e123fef_2.html

by Delia Cruceru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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