NASA resumes canceled asteroid mission (CNN/AP)

[eppur_se_muova]

Monday, March 27, 2006; Posted: 3:49 p.m. EST (20:49 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- NASA decided Monday to restart a mission to explore two of the solar system's largest asteroids, just weeks after the project was killed because of budget woes.

The space agency earlier this month scrapped the $446 million Dawn mission to orbit the asteroids Ceres and Vesta, nearly a half year after it was put on hold because of cost overruns and technical problems.
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"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," NASA Associate Administrator Rex Geveden, who lead the review panel, said in a statement.

Powered by a xenon ion engine, Dawn would be the first spacecraft to circle Ceres and Vesta, which are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/27/asteroid.mission.ap/index.html

earlier story: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=18315&mesg_id=18315

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. "Weapons, fire the Ion cannon." "But Cap't, at this range we will blow up!

Ion propulsion. I bet 6 years from now, we will laugh at how slow and low powered this was. But as the model T of propulsion systems, this is WAY COOL. Add solar sails, and they can really speed things up.

[LongTomH]

2. More from Phil Platt's Bad Astronomy Blog:

Phil Platt has been commenting on this on his Bad Astronomy Blog.

A new day for Dawn:

The people at NASA on the telecon were careful to say that this shows the strength of the appeal process and how missions can be reviewed — and I agree — but that still begs the question: why was the mission canceled in the first place, if upon review everything looks okay? It sounds like communication between the NASA decision-makers and the mission project teams needs to be improved. This whole ordeal caused a lot of grief in the scientific and international community, especially the manner in which it was canceled. I hope that the people involved can learn from what happened here, and avoid this sort of thing in the future. Given how many other missions have been on or may yet still be on the chopping block, we might very well find out. No other missions, however, have as yet started an appeal process.

You can follow the history of NASA's budget battle on the NASA and science threads. Phil Platt's blog and his Bad Astronomy website are fun, as well as being authoritative.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. Great head's up. Thanks.

lot's of work to be done, once we rid ourselves of Bushista. Exploration should be exciting. It should awaken the most incredible feelings in youth.
Traveling the solar system should be our goal in 10 yrs, not 10 bush administrations.