NASA's Dawn spacecraft first to orbit dwarf planet Ceres

NASA's spacecraft Dawn entered the orbit of dwarf planet Ceres, become the first spacecraft to do so.

The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000) kilometers from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet's gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.

Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL, said that ever since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid, and later a dwarf planet. Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres home.

In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that they were "exhilarated," and though they had lots to do in the next year and a half, they were currently on station with ample reserves and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives.