New dawn for Ceres

摘要

Ceres is a dwarf planet with giant potential. As NASA's Dawn spacecraft gears up for the first in-depth look at this tiny world, speculation is rife. Could Ceres be an overgrown comet? Host an ocean made of mud? Or even possess icy volcanoes that make it an unexpected host for life in the asteroid belt? "When we complete our observations, we will show that . Ceres is every bit a planet as its terrestrial neighbours Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury." That's what Christopher Russell, who leads the Dawn mission, told the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, last week.