NASA's Dawn spacecraft is fast closing on the mystery dwarf planet Ceres that might have sub-surface oceans.

Dawn explored the protoplanet Vesta just a few years ago. When it enters Ceres' orbit, Dawn will be the first spacecraft to explore two planetary bodies.

Dawn is the first spacecraft deployed to visit Ceres, a dwarf planet scientists still know little about. When Dawn began its approach to Ceres, it first spent some time on the opposite side of the Sun, which limited communications with the probe. Now, NASA mission control is able to transmit commands to the spacecraft and maneuver it towards the dwarf planet.

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To date, Dawn is 400,000 miles from Ceres and is approaching the dwarf planet at 450 miles per hour. Its path will mean it will rendezvous with Ceres in March 2015.

Ceres is the largest object found in the asteroid belt that divides Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe it consists of ice and rock and could even have oceans under its surface layer similar to one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.

Ceres is 950 km in diameter and probably has a surface of water-ice. Its100 kilometer-thick mantle contains 200 million cubic kilometers of water, which is more than all the fresh water on Earth. 

In January 2014, the Herschel Space Observatory detected water vapor emissions coming from the surface of Ceres.

With the help of Dawn, scientists stand to unravel more mysteries about the strange dwarf planet. Ceres is still quite a complete mystery to the team and unlike Vesta, Ceres apparently has no meteorites that can lead to clues about it, said Christopher Russell, who is the principal investigator for the Dawn mission.

During 2011 and 2012, Dawn explored the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months. Data and images showed scientists the first glimpse of Vesta's surface. A geologic map of Vesta reveals large meteorite impacts during Vesta's early evolution.

This mapping is important in further understanding Vesta's geological history using Dawn's visible and infrared mapping spectrometer and the gamma-ray and neutron detector, according to Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Vesta and Ceres are pivotal in discovering how the solar system was formed since it's possible these large bodies can also contain the building blocks of life and can also provide clues about how life came to be on Earth.

TagsNASA's Dawn Spacecraft Approaches Mysterious Dwarf Planet Ceres, NASA, NASA Dawn spacecraft, ceres planet, vesta planet, NASA Dawn ceres dwarf planet