DAWN DISCOVERY MISSION: LESSONS LEARNED

Dawn is a low-cost planetary mission with high heritage from Deep Space 1 and earlier missions. It uses ion propulsion to rendezvous with and orbit the two most massive asteroids in the main asteroid belt, 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta. The mission is well into its final year of development and will be launched in summer 2006. This paper shares lessons learned to date by the Dawn team.