[meteorite-list] NASA Reviews Canceled Asteroid Mission (Dawn)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Mar 16 18:08:39 2006
Message-ID: <200603161738.k2GHcZC10286_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/ap_on_sc/asteroid_mission

NASA Reviews Canceled Asteroid Mission
By ALICIA CHANG
Associated Press
March 16, 2006

LOS ANGELES - In an unusual move, is reviewing a
recent decision by an agency head to scrap a mission to orbit two
asteroids. The Dawn project was canceled on March 2, five months after
it was put on hold because of cost overruns and technical problems.

NASA's unusual step to review Dawn's termination came after the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the mission, presented
new evidence in support of it, the space agency said Wednesday in a
statement.

It's the first time in recent memory that a NASA center has challenged a
headquarters decision on a canceled mission, said NASA spokeswoman Erica
Hupp.

The review, headed by NASA Associate Administrator Rex Geveden, will
take into account JPL's new findings and the results from an independent
team dispatched to evaluate the mission. A decision was expected as
early as the end of the month.

NASA headquarters declined to say what the new evidence was and refused
to make Geveden available for an interview. JPL spokeswoman Veronica
McGregor said the center had no comment pending the review.

JPL director Charles Elachi previously expressed disappointment in the
cancellation. Elachi said the technical woes cited by the independent
team were either resolved or close to being fixed in time for a liftoff
next year.

Powered by a xenon ion engine, Dawn was supposed to be the first
spacecraft to circle Ceres and Vesta, two of the solar system's largest
asteroids that reside in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists believe asteroids are leftover rocky remnants from the solar
system's birth about 4.5 billion years ago, and studying them could
yield insight into how the sun and planets formed.

NASA put Dawn on hold last October due to budget issues and problems
with the spacecraft's fuel tanks. It then convened an independent team
to assess the program.

Project managers were taken aback earlier this month when Mary Cleave,
NASA's associate administrator for the science mission directorate,
scrubbed the mission after a congressional budget hearing.

Dawn's cancellation came at a time when NASA had been forced to delay
several science missions to focus on retiring the space shuttle fleet
and developing new manned vehicles to return to the moon in the next decade.

Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA's solar system division, previously
cited cost overruns and technical issues as the main factors for cutting
Dawn. The mission, part of NASA's low-budget Discovery program, is
cost-capped at about $373 million.
Received on Thu 16 Mar 2006 12:38:33 PM PST