By studying Ceres' gravity, scientists learned more about the dwarf planet's internal structure and were able to determine that the water reservoir is about 40 km deep and hundreds of km wide.
Dawn was launchd on 27 September 2007. The spacecraft found that asteroid Vesta is the parent of a specific variety of meteorites found on Earth. It also discovered that dwarf planet Ceres was once an ocean world.
Starting in early June, Dawn will begin collecting gamma ray and neutron spectra to better understand the composition of the topmost rock and soil layers while taking high-resolution photographs of dwarf planet Ceres.
The new data indicates that while Ceres, which is the largest body in the asteroid belt, was once warm enough for water to have shifted internally, those temperatures were never high enough for an iron core to separate from the rest of the dwarf planet's interior.
