Dwarf Planet Ceres!

Here are some of the exciting space things happening JUST IN MARCH:



That's a lot of things! The exploration of Ceres is probably the coolest: Ceres is the largest known object in the asteroid belt, a 'dwarf planet' that orbits between Mars and Jupiter. It has half the diameter of Pluto, but it's very big for an asteroid - in fact, when Pluto was demoted from planet to 'dwarf planet,' Ceres was part of the reason! Because if Pluto was going to be a planet, then maybe Ceres should be too...

 

This is a scale drawing, so Jupiter really is that much bigger than Earth. The Sun can't even fit! Eris is the 2nd largest dwarf planet after Pluto

The asteroid belt doesn't quite look like you'd expect though - Star Wars indicates that it's very tough to navigate, but space is SO BIG that the asteroids are actually pretty far apart. When scientists sent the Voyager spacecraft (the farthest man-made object from Earth), they didn't even calculate how to get through the asteroid belt because it was incredibly unlikely to hit anything.

Want to know more about any of this? How about the Voyager spacecraft? They were sent out in the 1970's and Voyager 1 entered 'interstellar space' a couple of years ago, meaning it's way out past Pluto. Both are still running and sending back information!

Here's a gif of Ceres:

 

Nobody knows what those white spots are!

Check out this link for 9 historical mysteries, solved by astronomy!