Asteroid mission canceled in latest NASA setback (CNN/AP)

[eppur_se_muova]

Friday, March 3, 2006; Posted: 9:59 a.m. EST (14:59 GMT)
The Dawn spacecraft was set to explore the solar system's largest asteroids, Ceres and Vesta.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- NASA on Thursday canceled a mission to visit two asteroids, five months after the program was put on hold because of cost overruns and technical problems.

The cancellation is the latest setback for NASA, which has been forced to delay science missions to focus on developing a new manned spacecraft to return to the moon in the next decade.
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The Dawn spacecraft was supposed to lift off in June on a nine-year voyage to two of the solar system's largest asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, which reside in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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Dawn was part of a NASA program called Discovery that aims to explore the solar system on what the space agency considers to be a shoestring budget. The program includes the Stardust mission, which returned to Earth in January with samples of comet dust.
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more at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/02/asteroid.mission.ap/index.html