NASA probe reaches dwarf planet for the first time

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.

Scientists discovered Ceres more than 200 years ago, but the dwarf planet still baffles scientists. NASA hopes the new mission will reveal more about the previous Dawn images of Ceres, which showed mysterious spots on its surface. The patches, which are in the same basin, may be signs of ice or liquid water beneath Ceres' mantle. If Ceres was once suitable for life in the solar system's "early days," the mission could help scientists better understand how the solar system was formed," NBC News explains.

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Dawn will begin taking new photos of Ceres in April, and its mission is scheduled to run through June 2016. Before its mission to Ceres, Dawn spent 14 months exploring Vesta, the asteroid belt's second-largest object.