LONDON: While it’s still about a month from finally settling into orbit around the dwarf planet, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has captured the highest-resolution images of Ceres to date.
The images were snapped on February 4th, when the spacecraft was still 90,000 miles from its final destination. Meanwhile, Dawn will settle into orbit around the largest object in the solar system’s asteroid belt in early March, making it the first to reach Ceres ever.
Marc Rayman, the chief engineer and mission director for Dawn, says that the team is very excited by the prospect of the probe arriving at Ceres. There’s very little NASA knows about the unique little dwarf planet Rayman added, as the Dawn mission represents a first opportunity to get an up close and personal look at the 590 mile wide planetoid.
