Dawn

(Newser) - There may be a new contender for the likeliest place to host life elsewhere in our solar system—and it's not a planet or a moon. Astronomers have spotted water vapor from Ceres, classed as both the smallest dwarf planet and largest asteroid, marking the first time water has...

(Newser) - This morning NASA launched a spacecraft that's headed to the asteroid belt, where it will get a close-up look at the belt's largest bodies, asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.  It's NASA’s first multi-target mission, and Dawn, which one engineer called “the first real interplanetary spaceship,...