NASA's Dawn probe, launched in 2007, has become the first ever space craft to go into orbit around a dwarf planet. It was captured by the dwarf planet’s Ceres's gravity at about 4:39 AM Pacific Standard Time this morning.
Having already explored the asteroid Vesta, the Dawn probe will then have investigated two '
protoplanets', which are thought to be the sorts of smaller bodies that collided together to form planets like our own.
Protoplanets have been observed forming from the disk of dust and gas surrounding a star, so to be able to study a protoplanet up close, at about a tenth of the distance between the earth and the moon, will give science the first real chance to understand their make up.
For starters, we'll be interested to know what those mysterious two shiny spots are:
And that's no mean feat, considering Ceres is about 400 million km from earth on average and only 950 km across.
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