We’re about to learn a great deal about the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. On Friday, March 6 the Dawn spacecraft will become the first spacecraft to orbit two separate targets after orbiting Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012.

“Dawn is about to make history. Our team is ready and eager to find out what Ceres has in store for us,“ said Robert Mase, project manager for the Dawn mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California in a statement.

In addition to the spacecraft making history, the study of Ceres will provide additional information about the history of the early solar system and how the objects within it, including Earth, formed.

“Studying Ceres allows us to do historical research in space, opening a window into the earliest chapter in the history of our solar system. Data returned from Dawn could contribute significant breakthroughs in our understanding of how the solar system formed,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington.

Since January, every few days Dawn has delivered the “best photos of Ceres to date” but the real magic starts now.

So, with an acknowledgement that we are about to know a great deal about Ceres, here is what we know now.

Ceres, named for the Roman goddess of agriculture, was discovered on Jan. 1, 1801 by Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. It was originally designated as a planet, then as more asteroids were discovered it was re-classified as an asteroid. In 2006 it was re-classified again as a dwarf-planet, like Pluto.

It is 590 miles in diameter, 260 million miles from the sun. A day on Ceres is 9.4 hours long and a year on Ceres is equal to 4.6 of ours.

All of those things we know, there are also many things that scientists believe that they know which will be confirmed shortly.

Ceres is believed to be made of rock and ice. In 2014 the Herschel Space Observatory spotted what appeared to be waver-vapor plumes coming from the surface. It is possible that those water plumes were created by a meteor strike, however it is also possible that they came from beneath the surface.

If they came from beneath the surface it would indicate that there is some sort of sub-surface ocean on Ceres, which would definitely be a surprise. If there is liquid water on the dwarf-planet it would also make it a potential candidate for life of some kind.

Ceres is also round, which may not sound like a big deal, but it is. The objects that surround it in the asteroid belt come in every shape and size but not round. Round bodies are thought to have differentiated interiors, which means that it has a core and a mantle, including the possibility of subsurface water.

It may also have an atmosphere. Scientists believe, based on what is known to date, that Ceres could get as warm as minus 37 degrees Fahrenheit. If there is frozen water on the surface of Ceres it would quickly change to a gas, providing an atmosphere albeit probably a very thin one.

Researchers believe that the asteroid belt, of which Ceres is a part, could have been a planet or planets. Planetesimals, the precursors of planets, likely formed in the region. Under normal circumstances the planetesimals would have gradually fused together to form a planet. However, the gravitational field of jupiter interfered with their ability to merge and caused violent collisions.

As the largest object remaining in the asteroid belt, Ceres could shed some light on this process as well.

That is the short version of the list to date. It will need to be revisited, revised and changed over the coming days, weeks and months.