Dwarf planet, giant achievement (Image: NASA)
It鈥檚 a small new world. At 0439 Pacific Standard Time, NASA鈥檚 entered orbit around Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. Staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, received confirmation at 0536 Pacific time.
The spacecraft was captured by the dwarf planet鈥檚 gravity when it was around 61,000 kilometres away, but will continue to spiral closer in over the next year and a half.
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It was not a direct flight. Dawn travelled via the asteroid Vesta, which it visited from 2011 to 2012, making it the first spacecraft to have called at two different worlds.
Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive objects in the asteroid belt, and together represent a time capsule of data on how our solar system formed. 鈥淪tudying Ceres allows us to do historical research in space, opening a window into the earliest chapter in the history of our solar system,鈥� said Jim Green, director of NASA鈥檚 Planetary Science Division in Washington DC, in a .
On its approach, Dawn spied in one of Ceres鈥檚 craters. Now that the spacecraft is in orbit, we can look forward to figuring out whether they are caused by ice, salts or possibly plumes of water vapour.
But the next images will not arrive for a few weeks: the spacecraft鈥檚 trajectory means it is on Ceres鈥檚 dark side until mid-April.
鈥淲e feel exhilarated,鈥� , principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles. 鈥淲e have much to do over the next year and a half, but we are now on station with ample reserves, and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives.鈥�
