UCLA

The Dawn mission is the ninth spacecraft in the Discovery series, selected for study in January 2001 and approved for development in December 2001. It is now being readied for launch in late June 2006 to rendezvous with and orbit the two largest minor planets 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres. Dawn is the first purely science mission to use ion propulsion as an enabling technology and the first to orbit two planetary bodies other than Earth. This mission is well into its assembly test and launch operations phase. This paper gives an overview of the science objectives and payload, reports on the status of the mission, and provides pointers to the literature describing the Dawn mission in greater detail.