Technical and managerial problems, as opposed to NASA's broader budget picture, led the agency to suspend work on the Dawn asteroid-or-biter mission pending a top-to-bot-tom review of the project, according to a senior NASA official. Colleen Hartman, NASA deputy associate administrator for science, said the agency expects to complete the review in February and then decide whether and how to proceed with Dawn, a Discovery-class mission that until recently was being readied for a June 2006. launch. Dawn is designed to orbit the solar system's two largest known asteroids over a nine-year period.
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