Mondo Knows Facts
Ceres holds about a third of the belt's mass
The dwarf planet is 940 kilometres across and has sub-surface ice Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, in 1801, and was raised to dwarf planet status in 2006. Dawn orbited it from 2015 and mapped bright salt deposits in Occator crater. It may retain a mud or brine layer beneath the crust. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: ceres, asteroids, dawn
Ceres holds about a third of the belt's mass: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The dwarf planet is 940 kilometres across and has sub-surface ice. The figure is taken from NASA Dawn, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.