Dawn Stories

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had dipped to less than…

The Space Foundation presented NASA’s Dawn mission with the 2019 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration at the opening ceremony of the foundation’s 35th Space Symposium on April 8, 2019. Dawn is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion…

The entire history of human existence is a tiny blip in our solar system’s 4.5-billion-year history. No one was around to see planets forming and undergoing dramatic changes before settling in their present configuration. In order to understand what came…

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter. Here are some great shots from its extended mission in the main asteroid belt.

When you see these prominent features of Ceres, you might recognize some of their Earthly cousins.

Observations of Ceres have detected recent variations in its surface, revealing that the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system is a dynamic body that continues to evolve and change.

Members of NASA's Dawn mission were honored with awards from the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement (RNASA) Foundation at a banquet in Houston on April 28, 2017.

An isolated mountain near the equator of the dwarf planet Ceres resembles a volcanic dome, according to new observations from NASA’s Dawn mission. Like the “Lonely Mountain” Erebor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology, Ahuna Mons on Ceres was once occupied by…

This artist’s concept shows a diagram of how the inside of Ceres could be structured, based on data about the dwarf planet’s gravity field from NASA’s Dawn mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA In the tens of thousands of photos returned by NASA’s…

Since its capture by the gravity of dwarf planet Ceres on March 6, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has performed flawlessly, continuing to thrust with its ion engine as planned.