A NASA spacecraft for the first time has arrived at a dwarf planet to begin a 16-month exploration. The space agency on Friday confirmed that the Dawn craft entered orbit around Ceres in the asteroid ...

A crater-rich dwarf planet named Ceres located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was long thought to be composed of a materials mixture not dominated by water ice.

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies a ring-shaped region called the asteroid belt, home to the vast majority of our solar system’s space rocks. The asteroid belt is as old as the solar system ...

How do you build a planet, let alone one capable of sustaining and evolving life? The clues to the “recipe” can perhaps be found in the leftovers scattered around our solar system. Things like ...

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has long perplexed planetary scientists. Once considered a planet, then an asteroid, and now officially classified as a dwarf ...

When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres in 2015, it revealed a dwarf planet far more complex than scientists expected.

The dwarf planet is a bizarre, cryovolcanic world. However, the organic deposits discovered on its surface so far are unlikely to originate from its interior. The organic material found in a few areas ...

The asteroid belt was a vast collection of rocks that was believed to be the remains of a planet that never formed. During the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, Jupiter's ...

Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this ...