It has been a year now since the Dawn spacecraft first reached the dwarf planet Ceres in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and during that time has shown Ceres to be a unique and complex little world. At first glance, Ceres just seems to be a heavily battered place, covered in craters like the Moon or Mercury, but a closer look reveals something more interesting: a small rocky world with large fractures, unusual “bright spots” randomly dispersed across the surface and an odd conical “mountain” which sits in isolation with nothing else like it around. Dawn has already acquired an enormous amount of data about Ceres, but now, in its lowest possible orbit, will continue to do for some time to come.
Read MoreDawn celebrates one year at Ceres with incredible new images of ‘Lonely Mountain’