![]() ![]() Scientists believe that ocean has now frozen into solid ice, covered by a crust of rock, dust and debris.Īt some point in its 4.5 billion-year history, Ceres could have fostered life: "We do expect that it had astrobiological potential," Raymond said. It probably had a subsurface ocean of liquid water at some point, Raymond said. ![]() Pluto is thought to have a rocky core and an icy shell, but Ceres is more complex. The refrigerator-sized, ion-driven spacecraft moved out of orbit around Vesta in 2012and headed for 590-mile-wide (950-kilometer-wide) Ceres - which is so big and round that it's classified as a dwarf planet, like Pluto.Īlthough they share a planetary pigeonhole, Ceres isn't anything like Pluto, said Dawn's deputy principal investigator, Carol Raymond. After Dawn's launch in 2007, the science team spent the mission's first five years focusing on the asteroid Vesta. Friday will mark the first time that the same NASA probe has gone into orbit around two celestial bodies beyond Earth, said Jim Green, director of NASA Headquarters' Planetary Science Division.
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