Dawn Mission Led by UCLA Physicist

Workers secure the attachments of the Dawn spacecraft onto the upper stage booster.

Copyright © NASA, George Shelton

This story updated July 9, 2007.

NASA's Dawn Mission is scheduled for liftoff in September from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Christopher T. Russell, UCLA professor of geophysics and space physics, has spent 15 years working on the mission to send a spacecraft to the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

"I want to get this spacecraft up in space, where it belongs," said Russell, principal investigator on this long-awaited journey to an unexplored region of space.

See the complete story in UCLA Today.

Published Jul 2, 2007 9:00 AM