NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has sent image of the dwarf planet Ceres that shows incredible geological features, indicating a turbulent past. The image shows surface of Ceres that was never seen before.

The spacecraft captured the image on May 23. The spacecraft was only 3,200 miles away from Ceres, when the image was captured. According to the mission team, resolution of the image is nearly 1,600 feet per pixel.

NASA officials gave details on the image, in which Dawn captured several secondary craters, created during re-impact of debris, which were spread from larger impact sites. So far, the spacecraft has revealed more details about the surface of Ceres. This is because the spacecraft is moving towards Ceres' lower orbit to map the dwarf planet.

According to NASA, "After transmitting these images to Earth on May 23, Dawn resumed ion-thrusting toward its second mapping orbit. On June 3, Dawn will enter this orbit and spend the rest of the month observing Ceres from 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above the surface”.

According to scientists, the region is precisely located at 13 degrees and 51 degrees on a northern latitude and 182 degrees and 228 degrees on an eastern latitude. This image was optimized and projected onto a model of Ceres and a smaller black notch found at the upper right region was also revealed.

It was estimated that NASA's Dawn mission costs US $473 million; it was launched in 2007 in order to explore Ceres and Vesta for the first time; these two are thought to be the two largest cosmic objects located in the major asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.