[meteorite-list] Only Five More Days for Your Name to Rise With the Dawn

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Oct 30 15:50:36 2006
Message-ID: <200610302050.MAA13394_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

DC Agle 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Erica Hupp/Dwayne Brown 202-358-1237/1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

News Release: 2006-135 October 30, 2006

Only Five More Days for Your Name to Rise With the Dawn

NASA's campaign to send the nom de plumes of people from around the
world into the heart of the asteroid belt ends Sat., Nov. 4.

Submitted names will be carried on board NASA's Dawn, the first
spacecraft to travel between and scrutinize two distinct worlds. Mission
scientists are confident Dawn observations of asteroid Vesta and dwarf
planet Ceres will answer basic questions about the nature and
composition of these celestial wanderers.

"How many chances do you get to fly into the very heart of the asteroid
belt?" said Keyur Patel, Dawn project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "When the craft is launched in June 2007,
yours and the names of your loved ones can hitch along for the ride and
be part of space exploration history."

Dawn will carry a silicon chip containing the names of asteroid, space
and other enthusiasts from around the world. People may submit their
names for this historic one-way mission by visiting JPL's Dawn Web site
now through Nov. 4 at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov . More than
170,000 people have already signed up for the asteroid belt tour.

Following launch, Dawn will employ an ion engine to propel it during its
more than four year, 3-billion-kilometer journey (1.9-billion miles) to
its first target ? asteroid Vesta. After months of detailed scientific
observation of Vesta, Dawn's ion engine will fire up again, and send it
on its way for a 2014 rendezvous with Ceres, recently anointed a "dwarf
planet" by the International Astronomical Union.

"This campaign will allow people from around the world to become
directly involved with Dawn, and through that, become familiar with the
mission's science," said University of California Los Angeles professor
Dr. Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator.

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. The University of California Los Angeles is
responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences
Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.
For information about NASA and other space flight missions on the
Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov .
Received on Mon 30 Oct 2006 03:50:33 PM PST