The new images of the dwarf planet Ceres, coming from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, show details of a rocky surface. The NASA dubbed the region on the planet "The Lonely Mountain". According to NASA's scientists, this is a four-mile-high lone mountain located in the planet's southern hemisphere.
Back in June the same mountain was spotted in several images, but now it can be seen much more clearly into the new set of closer images. In the high-resolution photos, the base of the mountain can be clearly seen with little debris.
According to Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director, as it conducts its ambitious exploration program, Dawn is performing flawlessly in this new orbit. The spacecraft's view is revealing exciting new details of the intriguing dwarf planet Ceres with a resolution three times as sharp now as in its previous mapping orbit.
Dawn arrived first on the orbit of the dwarf planet in March. This is already the third of four series of orbits with the mission to map the dwarf planet. When it just first in its flyby to Ceres, the orbit was from 8,400 miles high. In June, the images sent were from 2,700 miles high. Now, the new images are just from 915 miles high. It is scheduled for October that Dawn will remap Ceres again, this time from an altitude of only 230 miles.
At the current altitude, Dawn is programmed to circle and completely map Ceres over two months for a total of six times. Each of the mapping tours is taking 11 days.
Dawn's camera images are able to take shots at a resolution of 450 feet per pixel. Dawn is using a mapping spectrometer in addition to the camera images, in order to analyze the dwarf planet's surface minerals.
Previously, NASA's Dawn spacecraft visited for 14 months in 2011 and 2012 the second-largest object in the asteroid belt, Vesta. According to scientists, Vesta is the brightest asteroid seen from Earth. With Dawn's arrival to Ceres on March 6, 2015 it was marked the first time while NASA probe had visited a dwarf planet. After that mission, New Horizons also passed by Pluto in July.
According to astronomers, the dwarf planet Ceres was discovered in the year 1801. The small planet has a diameter of roughly 598 miles. The Dawn mission was launched by NASA in the year 2007 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Delta II rocket.
