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Nearly enveloped by the smoke after ignition, the Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Dawn spacecraft rises from the launch pad to begin its 1.7-billion-mile journey through the inner solar system to study a pair of asteroids. Dawn, the ninth mission in NASA's Discovery Program, will be the first spacecraft to orbit two planetary bodies, asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, during a single mission. Vesta and Ceres lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is also NASA's first purely scientific mission powered by three solar electric ion propulsion engines. Photo credit: NASA/Sandra Joseph and Rafael Hernandez
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