Dawn begins its long journey to the stars by Nina Gotzmannova

If you are expecting child in the near future, you can consider naming the baby Dawn. If not, or your plans is to have a baby in several years, another pick for you & Vesta for girl and Ceres for boy. Little bit unusual? Maybe. But they will be highly popular. Dawn is the name of spacecraft, which was launched to space on Thursday and Vesta and Ceres are the names of two asteroids, which will Dawn explore. It is the first space mission with an intention to orbit two asteroids. Dawn, a robotic space probe, has a difficult target to reach. It will travel to the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars and then explore two asteroids. In October 2011 it should arrive to Vesta and in February 2015 to dwarf planet Ceres. The mission will finish in July 2015.This two space objects were not chosen randomly. Not only they are the biggest members of the asteroid belt, but both have unusual characteristics that can help the scientist to reveal some of the secrets about the early solar system. Vesta is dry and rocky, while Ceres is covered with ice. Both were formed in the same time, about 4.5 billion years ago. The 3 billion-mile journey had finally begun after years of delays and postponement. It was originally scheduled to start in December 2003. It was renewed back in February 2004 and then until September 2006 underwent a roundabout of canceling and approving. Finally the start date was set on 20 June, but due to bad weather and some technical conditions it was postponed until this Thursday. On 27 September Dawn finally begins its long journey to the stars.On the voyage to the asteroids are also 360.000 people. Virtually, of course. From September 2005 to November 2006 people could send their name to NASA and have it written in a microchip, which is now on Dawn. So everyone can feel like a space tourist now.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_sc/asteroid_mission;_ylt=AhFsvh9p6zozVFjV1xeLiF2s0NUE

by Nina Gotzmannova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Posted by: Maria Vidlickova