After Eight Years, NASA’s Dawn Probe Brings Dwarf Planet Ceres Into Closest Focus

Space





Photo credit:

Ceres, as seen by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on December 10, around a crater chain called Gerber Catena. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA, CC BY

More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The probe has just reached the closest point it ever will, and is now beginning to collect its most detailed pictures and other measurements on this distant orb.