• Dawn Mission Honored With Collier Trophy

    From baalke@1:2320/100 to sci.space.news on Sun Jun 19 04:07:00 2016
    From Newsgroup: sci.space.news


    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6530

    Dawn Mission Honored With Collier Trophy
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory
    June 10, 2016

    NASA's Dawn mission, representing the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial
    targets, was honored with the National Aeronautic Association Robert J. Collier Trophy at a presentation in Arlington, Virginia, on Thursday,
    June 9, 2016.

    The award, presented annually, was given to Dawn "In recognition of the extraordinary achievements of orbiting and exploring protoplanet Vesta
    and dwarf planet Ceres, and advancing the nation's technological capabilities in pioneering new frontiers in space travel."

    The 8-foot-tall (2.4-meter-tall) trophy resides at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington and is engraved with the names of recipients.
    Dawn competed with a field of nine finalists to win this year's award.
    Dawn's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Previous Collier Trophy recipients involving JPL missions include the teams from
    NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (2012) and Voyager (1980).

    "All of us at NASA are very proud of our Dawn team. For the past eight
    years, Dawn has taught us much about Vesta and Ceres, and in a broader
    sense, about ourselves," said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. "This mission isn't only for scientists. It's for all of us who want to discover
    the nature of uncharted worlds and share that discovery with all who gaze
    up at the night sky in wonderment."

    Dawn is a project of NASA's Science Mission Directorate Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
    UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc.,
    in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space
    Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international
    partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit:

    http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

    More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

    http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

    http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

    JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

    News Media Contact
    Elizabeth Landau
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
    818-354-6425
    elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

    2016-147

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