On Friday, March 7 at 7:40 am EST, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft became the first spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet. It is also the first time a spacecraft has successfully achieved orbit around two different bodies after orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta in 2011 and 2012.

Dawn was still 38,000 miles away from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity and went into a stable orbit. At 8:36 EST, NASA’s mission control at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) received a signal that the spacecraft had entered orbit and all systems were functioning the way they were expected to.

“Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet. Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL in a statement.

The latest batch of photos from Dawn, taken on March 1, were mostly in shadow because the spacecraft was on the dark side of the planet. When Dawn emerges from the dark side it will begin delivering the best images of the dwarf planet taken to date and continue to deliver better ones as it makes closer and closer passes to Ceres.

“We feel exhilarated. We have much to do over the next year and a half, but we are now on station with ample reserves, and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The Dawn spacecraft originally launched in 2007 to study the largest objects in the asteroid belt, objects that are believed to have been created in the early years of the solar system.

During the early years of our solar system, dust turned to small bodies of material, which turned to slightly larger bodies of material. This process continued until they eventually became planets, but in the region of the asteroid belt, the gravitational tug of Jupiter disrupted the process leaving a field of rocks and ice that might have otherwise become planets.

Scientists hoped that by visiting this region and these objects we will learn more about conditions in the early solar system and the processes involved.

In 2011-12 Dawn visited Vesta, a dry rocky body that in some ways resembles the planets of the inner solar system. Ceres is a wet object that may contain liquid water under its icy surface and could even have an atmosphere. Those questions will likely be answered shortly. Ceres is similar to many of the moons orbiting the gas giants in the outer solar system.

In addition to its cameras, the Dawn spacecraft is equipped with a visible and infrared mapping spectrometer and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer. In addition to these instruments, data sent back by the spacecraft as it orbits Ceres will give researchers information about its gravitational field, properties and internal structure.

Regular updates on the dawn mission, including photo galleries and educational materials can be found at dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.