Science

NASA’s Dawn mission to asteroid belt delayed due to lightning

by William Atkins

Friday, 06 July 2007

Lightning in the overcast skies of east-central Florida today has postponed Saturday’s launch of NASA’s Dawn mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta.

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The workers loading fuel onto the booster had to stop when a lightning storm approached the Kennedy Space Center. The mission, however, had problems even before the bad weather occurred. The fueling of the second-stage rocket, which will launch Dawn to a dwarf planet and an astreroid, had been delayed due to abnormally hot conditions on the exterior payload walls of the rocket, which prevented the super-cold oxidizer propellant from being loaded.

Sunday, July 8, 2007 holds little promise of better weather as forecasters are predicting a likely chance for more bad weather. NASA has until July 11th to launch the spacecraft in order to avoid launch conflicts with a August 3rd mission to Mars (Mars Phoenix lander) and the next Space Shuttle mission (STS-118) with Endeavour and its astronaut crew heading to the International Space Station on August 7th.

If the weather should improve on Sunday, NASA opens the window of opportunity for the launch beginning at 4:04 p.m. EDT (2004 GMT) and the window closes 29 minutes later.

Dawn is expected to fly past Vesta in October 2011 in order to investigate its lava flows, which may help answer how it was initially formed. Later, in February 2005, Dawn will rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres.

For more information on NASA’s ion powered Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta, go to the iTWire article titled “NASA’s Dawn mission to asteroids powered with high-tech ion drive”.

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