NASA's Dawn spacecraft is getting closer to its final destination, Ceres, the biggest body in the asteroid belt, and the latest photos of this extraterrestrial world that were captured by the probe revealed that the dwarf planet is stranger than scientists expected it to be.
On Tuesday, the U.S. space agency unveiled the latest images of Ceres that were taken by the Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12. The images, which were taken at proximity of 52,000 miles, reveal craters and mysterious bright spots providing the science team behind the mission with intriguing questions to investigate as the spacecraft gets nearer to its destination.
"As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser," said Dawn mission principal investigator Chris Russell. "We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled."
In the newly released images, the 590-mile-wide dwarf planet appeared to be pockmarked by craters, has rugged terrain in its south pole and has a number of bright spots on its surface. Scientists have a number of speculations as to what these bright spots are.
One of these bright spots was already spotted in blurrier images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and scientists speculate that they could be expanses of ice albeit this is yet to be determined. Scientists hope that as the Dawn spacecraft nears Ceres, it will capture sharper views of the dwarf planet and unveil some of the mysteries of this alien world including the nature of the bright spots.
"Our sharper view reveals some [spots] that Hubble could not discern," said Dawn chief mission director Marc Rayman. "As Dawn gets closer and gathers more data on their appearance and their composition, we surely will get insight into what they are. I can't wait!"
As Dawn gets closer to the surface of Ceres to conduct studies for 16 months, it will deliver images and other relevant data about the dwarf planet to the team conducting investigations on Ceres' composition and nature, and this would include data about the bright spots and craters that are revealed in the latest images captured by the spacecraft.
The images have a resolution of 4.9 miles per pixel and currently provide the best view of Ceres to date. Dawn, which earlier explored the giant asteroid Vesta, will be captured into Ceres' orbit on March 6 later this year.
