Lola Gayle, STEAMRegister.com
On December, 5, 2014, NASA announced that its Dawn spacecraft had given us the best image yet of dwarf planet Ceres.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
That image depicted the planet as a mere speck of white in the otherwise empty, dark vastness of space.
A lot has happened since then, and we’ve seen many unique views, all much closer and in more detail.
On Friday, March 6, 2015, Dawn officially arrived at its destination, becoming the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The image above was taken on March 1 showing Ceres as a crescent, mostly in shadow because the spacecraft’s trajectory put it on a side of Ceres that faced away from the sun at the time.
As of December 4, 2015, Dawn was closing in on its final mapping orbit, reducing its orbital altitude to 270 miles (435 kilometers). The probe is continuing to make excellent progress to its fourth and final mapping orbit, according to NASA.
The Dawn mission has achieved several important firsts in space exploration. It is the only spacecraft ever to orbit two destinations beyond Earth and the only to orbit an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The giant protoplanet Vesta was confirmed to be a fascinating world more closely related to the terrestrial planets (including Earth) than to typical asteroids. Dwarf planet Ceres, larger yet less dense, is believed to have a large amount of ice and may even have subsurface liquid water. Ceres was the first dwarf planet discovered and Dawn is now studying it in detail.
See Also: Getting up close and personal with Pluto
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