The spacecraft will be launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is located at Cape Canaveral, a headland in Brevard County, Florida, and a few miles from the city of Cape Canaveral. It is a space launch facility operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, and is next to the Kennedy Space Center, the NASA space launch facility, located on Merritt Island, also in Brevard County.

Currently, the only concern for the mission is the weather. Meteorologists are predicting the possibility of rain showers at the time of launch, with a 30% chance of rain and isolated thunderstorms and, overall, partially cloudy conditions at about 7:00 local time. If weather conditions scrub the launch on Thursday, another launch opportunity exists on Friday.

NASA live TV coverage of the Dawn mission begins at 5:15 a.m. EDT.

Additional information is available from the iTWire article “NASA’s Dawn mission to asteroids powered with high-tech ion drive”.

Spaceflight Now.com contains a good article from NASA entitled “The Dawn spacecraft: FROM NASA PRESS KIT”.

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website for Dawn is: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/.

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