Spacecraft and launch vehicle processing at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral are building to a peak for two planned summer launches.
On June 30, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Dawn spacecraft is set to journey to the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, and on Aug. 3 the JPL Phoenix lander is scheduled to head toward Mars.
Phoenix is to arrive at Kennedy next week from Lockheed Martin near Denver. The spacecraft will begin a final series of tests, but unlike previous Mars landers, it will already be largely integrated inside its aeroshell, with just the bottom of the vehicle and its landing gear visible.
Phoenix is not planned to come out until moments before touchdown on Mars in May 2008. But launch site technicians will do final tests on the vehicle with it inside the shell and also attach its Mars atmospheric entry heat shield. Phoenix must launch by Aug. 25.
Meanwhile, the Dawn spacecraft, built by Orbital Sciences, is already well into final assembly at the Astrotech commercial processing facilities near the Cape. Its Delta II Heavy booster is also being erected on Launch Complex 17B. Final Dawn instrument tests are planned this week, and solar arrays spanning 65 feet are to be installed May 21-24. The arrays will power Dawn's Ion propulsion system to power the spacecraft into orbit around Vesta in October 2011 and then out of orbit in 2012 toward Ceres, a proto-planet that Dawn will also orbit starting in 2015. Dawn must launch by July 19.
Via AvWeek.
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