So far it was difficult to find a source to study the origin of our solar system, and now NASA has found that. NASA has planed to send its new mission – DAWN – to the dwarf planet Ceres and asteroid Vesta. International Astronomical Union (IAU) has already given the same status it gave to Pluto to Ceres also.

Professor Russell, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) –

"[Ceres and Vesta] are revealing information that was frozen into their ancient surfaces. By looking at the surface and how it was modified by the bombardment of meteoroids, we will get an idea of what the early conditions of Ceres and Vesta were and how they changed. So Dawn is a history trip too. We're going back in time to the early Solar System."

The fact the Ceres and Vesta have under gone ‘less metamorphoses’ after their birth is the reason why they got selected.

Christopher Russell “Ceres and Vesta have been altered much less than other bodies. The Earth is changing all the time; the Earth hides its history, but we believe that Ceres and Vesta, formed more than 4.6 billion years ago, have preserved their early record.”

The mission intends to find the formation of Solar System (4.6 billion years ago) and its early stages. Further it will try to understand its internal structure and density, determine size, composition, shape and mass, inspect surface features and craters and comprehend the role of water in scheming asteroid evolution.

 The mission is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on 7 July. It is projected that the mission will meet Vesta in 2011 and will visit Ceres in 2015.

The DAWN has inbuilt instruments to make out minerals on the surface and the elements they have. It may also send high quality pictures of mountains, canyons, craters and ancient lava flows.

Out of the two, Ceres remains nearer to the ancient state than Vesta. So it is likely that the mission will get more information from Ceres. Thus the spacecraft will orbit Vesta for about nine months to collect enough data