Kennedy Space Center, Fla. -- The Dawn spacecraft is seen here in clean room C of Astrotech's Payload Processing Facility. In the clean room, the spacecraft will undergo further processing. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

Image credit: NASA

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