I was just reading 'Aviation Week' magazine for July 2, 2007, and spotted an interesting anomaly, for those with a conspiratorial bent.
On p.56-59, there is an article on the NASA Dawn mission to asteroids Ceres and Vesta. On p.57, it states, "Dawn also owes its survival for a 2007 launch attempt to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)..." plus "Dawn's ion engines were fired in NRL's massive altitude chamber normally used for secret military spacecraft testing. The final integration of Dawn and its shipment to Cape Canaveral also took place out of NRL, not Orbital Sciences..." (Orbital Sciences Corp. built the probe.)
Now, if I wanted to 'adjust' something on the spacecraft, this would be the perfect situation. It could be anything - 'shutter control', additional data streams, new software capabilities to be field tested, or various ways to assume control of the craft. It could even include small additional sensors.
In line with this, Dawn was 'cancelled' not long ago - out of the blue, and with almost all hardware completed. Now, if I wanted total cooperation with any 'additions' that I wanted to make, this would make an excellent 'bargaining chip' in back-room discussions with program managers and scientists. Later, of course, NASA heads 'backed off' the cancellation.
So, just a 'heads up' in case of future peculiarities happening with this craft...
On p.56-59, there is an article on the NASA Dawn mission to asteroids Ceres and Vesta. On p.57, it states, "Dawn also owes its survival for a 2007 launch attempt to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)..." plus "Dawn's ion engines were fired in NRL's massive altitude chamber normally used for secret military spacecraft testing. The final integration of Dawn and its shipment to Cape Canaveral also took place out of NRL, not Orbital Sciences..." (Orbital Sciences Corp. built the probe.)
Now, if I wanted to 'adjust' something on the spacecraft, this would be the perfect situation. It could be anything - 'shutter control', additional data streams, new software capabilities to be field tested, or various ways to assume control of the craft. It could even include small additional sensors.
In line with this, Dawn was 'cancelled' not long ago - out of the blue, and with almost all hardware completed. Now, if I wanted total cooperation with any 'additions' that I wanted to make, this would make an excellent 'bargaining chip' in back-room discussions with program managers and scientists. Later, of course, NASA heads 'backed off' the cancellation.
So, just a 'heads up' in case of future peculiarities happening with this craft...
