Ceres is a dwarf planet. When poor Pluto got demoted, it was fair in a sense because otherwise they’d have had to elevate Ceres, and four or five others, to full planetary status, which I would have preferred because the more the merrier, but there have to be limits, I guess.
It’s in the news because there’s a spaceship up there, named Dawn, close enough to get some good pictures, better than they’ve ever got before, and it’ll settle into an orbit in a couple months.
This is particularly interesting because Ceres could possibly have life. Maybe not life as we know it, maybe not intelligent, technologically capable life, but life. It’s a rocky planet, with water. It’s too far from the Sun to be in the Goldilocks zone, it’s beyond Mars, but scientists think it might have some kind of an internal heat source of its own, so some of the water might be liquid under a crust of ice.
I don’t know how they could possibly find it, since a landing is not planned, but if they find evidence, I’m sure there will be fresh missions. Even if we were to find some weird alien fish, in a totally sealed in world, hidden from space (how would they have got there?), that would totally make it obvious that life is common, abundant throughout the universe.
In any event, I’ll be watching this one closely.
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