[meteorite-list] Dawn Mission Honored With Collier Trophy

[Ron Baalke]

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 at jpl.nasa.gov

2016-147