NASA's Dawn spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres on Friday, eight years after scientists first launched the probe on its $473 million mission.
Ceres lies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Dawn will spend 16 months exploring the dwarf planet. Ceres is the asteroid belt's largest object, an impressive 590 miles in diameter. Like Pluto, Ceres is classifed as a dwarf planet, because it's "big enough to retain a round shape but doesn't necessarily stand out in a celestial crowd," NBC News explains.
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