Artists concept of the Dawn spacecraft entering orbit around Ceres. - Stock-Grafiken

Artists concept of the Dawn spacecraft entering orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. In late November 2015 Dawn will descend to its closest orbit around Ceres at a distance of about 230 miles. While no close-up observations of yet been made of Ceres itself, here it is rendered as appearing similar to a much smaller version of the Earths Moon, heavily cratered with the addition of surface water ice and hypothesized plumes of ice crystals from water geysers on its surface. In February 2015 the unmanned Dawn spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the dwarf planet Ceres. The 65 foot long, 2.5 ton probe was launched from the Earth in 2007, passed Mars in 2009, and went into orbit around the protoplanet Vesta in July 2011 where it stayed until September 2012. Once in orbit around Ceres, Dawn is expected to operate for about a year making observations of this largest object in the asteroid belt.