NASA's Dawn spacecraft first to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is the first to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. Ceres is the largest object known in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and used to be classified as an asteroid until it was changed because of the size. According to NASA, the spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles, or 61,000 kilometers from Ceres, when it was captured by the gravity on March 6, 2015. Below Ceres is seen from NASA's Dawn spacecraft on March 1, 2015.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The image from NASA's spacecraft was taken at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers).

In January 2014, Scientists using the Herschel space observatory have made the first definitive detection of water vapor from Ceres.