On February 19th 2015, The NASA Dawn spacecraft took photos of two bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres, in the asteroid belt. The photos, which were taken at a distance of 29,000 miles, revealed a second spot of light in addition to a first spot which was observed in photos taken at a distance of 238,000 miles on January 16th 2015.
Both bright spots appear to lie within the boundaries of a crater. Scientist aren't sure what these bright spots are. One theory is that since the lights seem to disappear as they rotate into darkness, that it's likely that they are areas of salt. It is also being suggested that the lights could be lava or the result of some kind of volcanic activity.
The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Ceres on March 6th, 2015 at 16 percent of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The space craft is 310 million miles from the Earth. The Dawn spacecraft was launched in September of 2007 with a mission to investigate the two most massive bodies in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It explored the asteroid Vesta between 2011 and 2012.
The Dawn spacecraft is due to pass into a black out period when it passed behind the sun. Scientist at NASA expect the the spacecraft to transmit even clearer photos by mid to late April 2015, when it becomes visible again. If all goes well the Dawn spacecraft should reach its science mapping orbit by December 2015 and complete its primary mission by June 2016.
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