From dusking Ceres to Dawn

AllAboutSpace As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft approaches the final moments of its 11-year mission, including its mission around the small, icy dwarf planet Ceres, it continues to explore Ceres' unusual surface features. Dawn – the only spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations – is expected to run out of fuel, sometime between August and October, when it will cease communication with Earth, but will remain in orbit around Ceres.

This mosaic was obtained by Dawn from an altitude of about 34 kilometres (21 miles) where Dawn photographed two of the dwarf planet’s most famous features: the Cerealia Facula and Occator Crater. Images such as these, along with other spectrometry measurements, have revolutionised our understanding of Ceres, revealing deposits of sodium carbonate and its broader composition at a finer scale. It is also thought that the dark background may hold clues about the origins of the facula.

Dr Carol Raymond – Dawn’s deputy principal investigator: “The first views of Ceres obtained by Dawn beckoned us with a single, blinding bright spot.”

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