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(meteorobs) JPL Asteroid Mission Gets Thumbs Up From NASA


MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasadot gov
 
Contact:  JPL/Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
   NASA/Donald Savage (202) 358-1753
        
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                       December 21, 2001 

JPL ASTEROID MISSION GETS THUMBS UP FROM NASA 

     A mission that will orbit the two largest asteroids in 
the solar system is one of a pair of missions chosen by NASA 
for the agency's Discovery program.

     The mission, called Dawn, is managed by NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Led by principal 
investigator Dr. Christopher T. Russell of the University of 
California, Los Angeles, Dawn is scheduled for launch in 2006.

     The second new Discovery mission is Kepler, a spaceborne 
telescope, also scheduled for launch in 2006. It will search 
for Earth-like planets around stars beyond the solar system. 
Kepler is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett 
Field, Calif.

     "Kepler and Dawn are exactly the kind of missions NASA 
should be launching, missions that tackle some of the most 
important questions in science yet do it for a very modest 
cost," said Dr. Edward Weiler, associate administrator for 
space science at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C.  "It's 
an indicator of how far we've come in our capability to 
explore space when missions with such ambitious goals are 
proposed for the Discovery program of lower-cost missions 
rather than as major projects costing ten times as much."

     The Dawn mission will make a nine-year journey to orbit 
the two most massive asteroids known, Vesta and Ceres, two 
"baby planets" very different from each other yet both 
containing tantalizing clues about the formation of the solar 
system. Using the same set of instruments to observe these two 
bodies, both located in the main asteroid belt between Mars 
and Jupiter, Dawn will improve our understanding of how 
planets formed during the earliest epoch of the solar system.

     Ceres has quite a primitive surface, water-bearing 
minerals, and possibly a very weak atmosphere and frost. Vesta 
is a dry body that has been resurfaced by basaltic lava flows, 
and may have an early magma ocean like Earth's Moon. Like the 
Moon, it has been hit many times by smaller space rocks, and 
these impacts have sent out meteorites at least five times in 
the last 50 million years.

     The mission will determine these pre-planets' physical 
attributes, such as shape, size, mass, craters and internal 
structure, and study more complex properties such as 
composition, density and magnetism.

     The Dawn mission builds on the highly successful ion-
propulsion technology pioneered by NASA's Deep Space 1 
spacecraft. During its nine-year journey through the asteroid 
belt, Dawn will rendezvous with Vesta and Ceres, orbiting from 
as high as 800 kilometers (500 miles) to as low as 100 
kilometers (about 62 miles) above the surface.

     "I'm ecstatic that we'll have such a great opportunity to 
show what ion propulsion can do," said JPL's Sarah Gavit, Dawn 
project manager. "Ceres and Vesta are two of the largest 
unexplored worlds in our solar system.  We'll learn about 
early planet formation in ways that wouldn't have been 
possible before this mission."  She said she looks forward to 
working with Orbital Sciences, a new industry partner for 
NASA's interplanetary spacecraft.  Orbital Sciences 
Corporation, Dulles, Va., will develop the Dawn spacecraft.

     "With its cutting-edge capability, Kepler may help us 
answer one of the most enduring questions humans have asked 
throughout history: are there others like us in the universe?" 
said principal investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames 
research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., leader of the second 
selected mission.

     The Kepler mission differs from previous ways of looking 
for planets orbiting other stars. Kepler will look for the 
'transit' signature of planets that occurs each time a planet 
crosses the line-of-sight between the planet's parent star and 
the observer. When this happens, the planet blocks some of the 
light from its star, resulting in a periodic dimming. This 
periodic signature is used to detect the planet and to 
determine its size and orbit. Kepler will continuously fix its 
gaze at a region of space containing 100,000 stars and will be 
able to determine if Earth-sized planets make a transit across 
any of the stars.

     The industrial partner for mission hardware development 
is Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. 
Kepler's selection involves a delayed start of development of 
up to one year due to funding constraints in the Discovery 
program.

     NASA selected these missions from 26 proposals made in 
early 2001. The missions must stay within the Discovery 
program's development cost cap of about $299 million.

     The Discovery program emphasizes lower-cost, highly 
focused scientific missions. The past Discovery missions are 
Near Shoemaker, Mars Pathfinder and Lunar Prospector, all of 
which successfully completed their missions. Stardust and 
Genesis are in space; both have begun collecting science data, 
although Stardust has not yet arrived at its target comet.  
Contour is scheduled to launch next summer, Deep Impact in 
January 2004 and Messenger in March 2004. Aspera-3 and 
NetLander are Discovery Missions-of-Opportunity under 
development.

     Information about Dawn and images are available 
at: http://www-ssc.igpp.ucladot edu/dawn/ .  Details about the 
Kepler mission are available at: 
http://www.kepler.arc.nasadot gov .  Kepler images are available 
at: http://www.kepler.arc.nasadot gov/downloading.html .  
Information about the Discovery program is available at:  
http://discovery.nasadot gov/ .

     JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology 
in Pasadena, manages Dawn for NASA's Office of Space Science, 
Washington, D.C.

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