Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has long been cast as a frozen relic of the early solar system — quiet, airless, and lifeless. But new research suggests that billions of years ago, this dwarf planet may have harbored the right ingredients to support simple microbial life. That’s according to a new study using …
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When NASA’s Dawn mission arrived at Ceres in 2015, scientists and the general public got their first detailed look at this strange and beautiful planetoid. As the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, accounting for more than 39% of its total mass, Ceres is the only object in the Belt that has undergone hydrostatic equilibrium (aka. became round under …
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The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past. New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms. Although there is no …
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