Dawn Update - March 2005

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/ne...awnstatus.html

Dawn's Early Light
Volume 4, Issue 1 March 2005

Dawn Mission Status
Christopher T. Russell
Dawn Principal Investigator, UCLA

The Dawn Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations [ATLO] Readiness Review
[ARR] was held on December 14-15, 2004. Dawn passed the ARR and
officially entered ATLO on January 19, 2005. ATLO activities are led by
Orbital Sciences Corporation, the spacecraft contractor, except for
elements of the ion propulsion system. The graphite composite flight
core structure was delivered to JPL in October for integration of the
feed system for the xenon fuel used in the ion propulsion system, and
the xenon tank was mounted inside the structure. That integration was
completed and the flight core structure was shipped to Orbital on March
4. All spacecraft subsystems are going through, or have completed,
environmental testing, and the flight solar panels completed thermal
vacuum chamber testing and were delivered from Emcore to Dutch Space
for
array integration and test. The first Flight System Testbed is fully
functional and the second Flight System Testbed is nearly complete.

Instrument deliveries occur between April and July, 2005. The LANL
Gamma
Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND) will be delivered in April. The
Framing
Cameras (FC) from Germany and Vis/IR Mapping Spectrometer (VIR) from
Italy will be delivered by early July. The FC and VIR deliveries are
behind schedule due to the project's decision to swap out the FPGAs and
late delivery of the VIR beryllium mirrors from the vendor. The
instrument schedules are being worked to reduce the impact of these
delays on ground testing and calibration activities.

Overall, the project is making smooth progress, absorbing the
inevitable
bumps in the road. The schedule remains tight, and is being
aggressively
managed with judicious application of reserves.