As NASA's Dawn spacecraft came closer to the dwarf planet Ceres, it captured stunning new images of the planet's icy surface and its remarkable new features.

The spacecraft is targeting the largest object found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's now 90,000 miles closer to its ultimate goal, Ceres, and is set to arrive in March.

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Scientists knew little about the solar system's newest planet until Dawn revealed sharper images of Ceres. Previously, Ceres was just seen as a blurry spot from the Hubble Space Telescope using optics that showed hints of color from the dwarf planet's surface.

New images captured by Dawn reveal Ceres has impact craters all over its surface. The planet's south polar region reveals a large perfectly formed circular impact crater.

When the probe first took photos of the dwarf planet, scientists became excited because of mysterious white spots that pockmarked the planet's surface. Apart from these ominous white spots, there seems to be seven smaller but brighter features that seem to indicate ice formations or some subsurface mineral that became exposed by those impact craters.

The sharpest images of Ceres include each pixel spanning 8.5 miles across. To date, the spacecraft is traveling at 231 miles per hour.

Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet but is the largest object found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres measures 590 miles in diameter and can provide data about the formation of the solar system.

The dwarf planet is also thought to contain water beneath its icy surface. It's also similar to asteroid Vesta, which measures around 359 to 285 miles, that is another target of the Dawn spacecraft.  

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