Dawn is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science.
The space probe’s two destinations are the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres that circle the Sun within the so-called aseroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research has contributed the mission’s on borard camera system. The two identical cameras were developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research with significant contributions by the Institute for Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering of the Technical University Braunschweig.

But the Dawn mission, that was launched in September 2007 is far more than a journey to two distant bodies. It is a journey back in time to the beginnings of our solar system more than 4,5 billion years ago. Vesta and Ceres are among the largest survivors from this early phase of planet formation. All other larger bodies either merged to form planets or broke apart due to heavy collisions. The internal structure and the surfaces of Vesta and Ceres, however, have remained mostly unchanged. They therefore offer scientists the opportunity to take look back into time.