Mysterious stains on dwarf planet amazes scientists – NRK

Ceres is a dwarf planet. It is not big enough to get the plane status, but is still a small planet.

The spacecraft Dawn was launched in 2007 to explore the major objects in the asteroid belt. It has already visited the large asteroid Vesta.

Ceres and Vesta are the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Dawn left Vesta in 2012 to start the journey towards Ceres. Dawn is the only spacecraft that has traveled between two different objects in the solar system, and it is equipped with an Ion thruster to do the job.

Dawn arrived at Ceres on March 6 this year.

Mysterious Ceres

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and has a diameter of about 950 kilometers. This is still a small planet, and in comparison, our own moon has a diameter of about 3500 kilometers.

Scientists know yet very little about Ceres, and Dawn mission will hopefully uncover new knowledge about the dwarf planet.

Dawn will orbit Ceres in 14 months, and the probe has already seen some strange bright spots on the surface.

These patches have a different temperature than the surrounding terrain, and researchers who follow Dawns measurements, still do not know what these stains can be for something.

North Pole on Ceres. Photo by Dawn probe to NASA on April 10th.

Photo: Handout / AFP

Water

Ceres also works as it is composed of interesting fabrics and the small planet may consist of significant amounts of frozen water. As much as 40 percent of the dwarf planet may be clean water.

There has even been speculation about Ceres has a liquid ocean beneath its surface. It has previously been discovered water vapor on the surface. Some scholars take this as a sign that it might exist liquid water under the ground, according to space.com.

The question is whether Ceres has enough internal heat to melt ice, thus creating jets of water vapor on the surface or whether heat from the sun melts ice and creates steam.

Currently, people wait in anticipation of what might come out of Dawns surveys. Preliminary runs Dawn orbiting 13,500 miles of dwarf planet. May 9th will probe slowly but surely moving down closer courts.