images

Dawn spacecraft launch -09-2007

by

NASA/Kim Shiflett/Novapix

Reference

e-lus21-01502

Date

2007-10-01

September 27, 2007. The Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Dawn spacecraft begin its 1.7-billion-mile journey through the inner solar system to study a pair of asteroids. Liftoff was at 7:34 a.m. EDT from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will be the first to orbit two planetary bodies, asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, during a single mission. It is also NASA's first purely scientific mission powered by three solar electric ion propulsion engines