Cratered Ceres

In spring 2015 NASA’s Dawn mission, coming off the back of exploring the asteroid Vesta, entered into orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres and immediately found a puzzle for the space probe to unpick.

Now just one month away from entering into orbit around Ceres, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveals new pictures and a movie — the sharpest images to date of the Texas-sized dwarf planet.

Ceres is covered in countless small, young craters, but none are larger than 175 miles (280 kilometres) in diameter. To scientists, this is a huge mystery, given that the dwarf planet must have been hit by numerous large asteroids during its 4.5 billion-year lifetime. Where did all the large craters go?