Fact Sheet
To the Dawn of the Solar System
The asteroids Ceres (left) and Vesta are the destinations for a spacecraft called Dawn, which is scheduled for launch in early July. The craft will arrive at Vesta in 2011, orbit for several weeks, then journey to Ceres, arriving in 2015. The asteroids are leftovers from the birth of the solar system, and may contain important clues about the formation of the Sun and planets and the composition of the cloud of gas and dust that gave them birth. [NASA/ESA/J.Parker (SWRI)/L.McFadden (Univ. Maryland)]
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