NASA’s Dawn spacecraft launched this morning on a 13 story tall Delta II rocket from Launch Complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Dawn is headed to the asteroid belt to take a look at Vesta and Ceres. Vesta is a rocky body, and Ceres is an icy dwarf planet. These bodies are considered to be relatively untouched from the solar system’s earliest epoch 4.5 billion years ago. The mission is to discover more about what conditions were like at that time.
Dawn marks at least three firsts:
- The first mission to explore the heart of the asteroid belt.
- The first mission to orbit two celestial bodies outside Earth.
- The first mission to visit a dwarf planet.
Dawn also has the most powerful ion propulsion system and most powerful solar arrays to date on any space craft.
For more on Dawn go to
and
http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam
The video I took of liftoff can be found here
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2139151084732719267&hl=en