Dawn Spacecraft Processing

In Astrotech's Payload Processing Facility, an overhead crane lifts the Dawn spacecraft from its transporter. Dawn will be moved into clean room C for unbagging and further processing. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C