A Dwarf Planet Awaits NASA Probe After 3 Billion Miles
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A NASA spaceship, its engines too weak to power a skateboard, is drawing closer to a never-visited dwarf planet in a quest to learn more about how Earth was formed.
Dawn, a golf-cart-size NASA probe launched seven years ago, is on its way to rendezvous with Ceres, a minor planet as big across as Texas, on March 6. A rocky globe in the asteroid belt that probably holds a reservoir of ice, Ceres may provide keys to understanding what our own planet was like at the very beginning of its formation.