The spacecraft is approaching Ceres, the next destination in its multi-year tour of the giants of the asteroid belt.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres, the next destination in its multi-year tour of the giants of the asteroid belt.

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. have programmed Dawn for its approach phase, putting it on pace to arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015, the space agency said.

Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, is considered a dwarf planet. It's never been visited by a spacecraft before. When Dawn enters the orbit of Ceres this March, it will mark the probe's second such visit to a previously unexplored asteroid belt object.

The Texas-sized dwarf planet has an average diameter of 590 miles. Dawn previously rendezvoused with the protoplanet Vesta, with a diameter averaging 326 miles, the second-biggest body in the collection of small, rocky objects and debris between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft spent 14 months orbiting Vesta after arriving in July 2011, capturing close-up imagery of the asteroid.

In just a few months, scientists working on the Dawn mission hope to receive evidence from the probe confirming whether a theory that Ceres possesses an "ocean" under its icy crust is accurate, NASA said.

"Ceres is almost a complete mystery to us," UCLA's Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, said in a statement. "Ceres, unlike Vesta, has no meteorites linked to it to help reveal its secrets. All we can predict with confidence is that we will be surprised."

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NASA Readies Dawn Probe for Ceres Approach