NASA to Hold News Conference on Asteroid Mission Results

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news conference on Thursday, May 10, at
2 p.m. EDT to present a new analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta
using data from the agency's Dawn spacecraft.

The event will be held in the James E. Webb Auditorium at NASA
Headquarters located at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The event will be
broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's
website. The journal Science has embargoed the findings prior to the
news conference.

The panelists for the briefing are:
-- Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy principal investigator, NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Harry McSween, chair, Dawn surface composition working group,
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
-- Vishnu Reddy, Dawn framing camera team member, Max Planck Institute
for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and the
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks
-- David O'Brien, Dawn participating scientist, Planetary Science
Institute, Tucson, Ariz.
-- Maria Cristina De Sanctis, Dawn co-investigator and visible and
infrared mapping spectrometer team lead, Italian National Institute
for Astrophysics, Rome

Reporters unable to attend the briefing in-person can ask questions
from other NASA centers, by telephone or via Twitter using the
hashtag #asknasa. To obtain dial-in information, journalists must
send their name, affiliation and telephone number to
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by noon on May 10.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The event will be streamed live on Ustream with a moderated chat
available at:

http://www.ustream.com/nasajpl2

For more information about Dawn, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

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