Visualizing Where NASA's Pluto And Ceres Craft Are Right Now In Space

Today we watch NASA approach Pluto and Ceres, unfurling space mysteries aplenty. New images are appearing today of both the largest object in the asteroid belt and our furthest sun-circling cousin Pluto appear – but what we want to do is show you where the craft are. What you're about to see is where NASA is as far as space cruisers, first with the NASA Dawn spacecraft, then with the Pluto mission craft New Horizons. They're very, very far away from one another, but they're both just a stone's throw away from their respective goals.

NASA's New Horizon's vehicle has been flying for many moons, so to speak, while Dawn has been out there for a far shorter amount of time on a far shorter journey. They're about to unwrap some of the most awesome mysteries in space on some of the smallest – yet significant – rocks in our solar system.

Mission / Destination• New Horizons mission is headed to Pluto• Dawn just passed by Ceres

Above you're seeing the current location of both Dawn and New Horizons as of the posting of this article. The first simulation comes from Johns Hopkins APL (Applied Physics Laboratory) where they're tracking New Horizons approach to Pluto. We've added a dot where Dawn is – approximately.

Below you'll see a simulation of where Dawn is in a more exact sort of manner.

Information on Dawn's current location courtesy of the NASA Jet Propultion Laboratory and simulations by Gregory J. Whiffen, JPL. At the JPL you'll be able to see the slightly more colorful charts as indicated here – we're just going for simplicity since we've got a couple of craft we're watching.

Stay tuned as we continue to find out what both Dawn and New Horizons reveal as they approach their respective subject matter.

UPDATE: Below you'll see a number of photos taken by Dawn as the craft reaches and flies by the planet.

ABOVE: "This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 14, 2015, shows an intriguing mountain on dwarf planet Ceres protruding from a relatively smooth area."

Below you'll see a number of images just released by the Dawn crew taken over the past week.

Included (above) is one of several shots of the mini-planets mysterious reflective spots.

The images above come from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology Dawn mission collective.