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March 27, 2006 RELEASE: 06-108
NASA Reinstates the
Dawn Mission
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Credit:
William K. Hartmann Courtesy of UCLA
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Letter
on Dawn Reinstatement
A letter from Associate
Administrator Rex Geveden explains the decision to reinstate
the Dawn mission, which will study asteroids Vesta and Ceres.
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NASA senior management
announced a decision Monday to reinstate the Dawn mission, a
robotic exploration of two major asteroids. Dawn had been
canceled because of technical problems and cost overruns.
The
mission, named because it was designed to study objects dating
from the dawn of the solar system, would travel to Vesta and
Ceres, two of the largest asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars
and Jupiter. Dawn will use an electric ion propulsion system and
orbit multiple objects.
The mission originally was
approved in December 2001 and was set for launch in June 2006.
Technical problems and other difficulties delayed the projected
launch date to July 2007 and pushed the cost from its original
estimate of $373 million to $446 million. The decision to cancel
Dawn was made March 2, 2006, after about $257 million already had
been spent. An additional expenditure of about $14 million would
have been required to terminate the project.
The
reinstatement resulted from a review process that is part of new
management procedures established by NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin. The process is intended to help ensure open debate and
thorough evaluation of major decisions regarding space
exploration and agency operations.
"We revisited a
number of technical and financial challenges and the work being
done to address them," said NASA Associate Administrator Rex
Geveden, who chaired the review panel. "Our review
determined the project team has made substantive progress on many
of this mission's technical issues, and, in the end, we have
confidence the mission will succeed."
Source
/ Credit: NASA
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