Sarah Fecht
at 07:18 AM Mar 10 2015
Space // 

At 7:39 EST this morning, the dwarf planet Ceres captured the Dawn spacecraft in its gravity. After a journey of more than seven years, the spacecraft will spend the next 16 months orbiting this tiny world 260 million miles away.

Sarah Fecht
at 08:20 AM Feb 27 2015
Space // 

You can't trick us, Ceres. Out there in the asteroid belt, in the dark space between Mars and Jupiter, you've been keeping secrets. Scientists thought your shiny white spot was probably some kind of ice or a glassy deposit from a volcanic eruption. Others said Death Star. Now it turns out your one spot is actually two, and that's supposed to convince us Ceres is harmless? Riiight, nice try. We know the truth -- that you've only just begun to fire up your planet-destroying multi-beam superlaser.

Loren Grush
at 08:30 AM Feb 6 2015
Space // 

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is about to get up, close, and personal with Ceres, a dwarf planet that's been lurking in the asteroid belt. As it approaches, Dawn has been snapping some amazing images of the rock, and it just took some of its highest-resolution photographs yet.

sarahfecht
at 09:43 AM Jan 28 2015
Space // 

NASA's Dawn mission has beamed back the best-ever view of a 'planet' between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft is just 147,000 miles and a few months shy of reaching Ceres, the largest unexplored rock between the Sun and Pluto. (Though the 590-mile-wide rock is officially classified as both a dwarf planet and the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, Dawn's operators consider it a real planet.)

sarahfecht
at 12:02 PM Jan 26 2015

While the world awaits the first visit of Pluto this July, another space mission will reach a strange world much closer to home. And months sooner.

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