The Dawn orbited Vesta for nearly a year, before heading to the dwarf planet Ceres about 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) away, according to Space.com.
The Earth has been hit by asteroids for nearly a billion years now, but our planet's atmosphere has succeeded in stopping most of them from bringing about a catastrophe.
Astronomers find white dwarf stars to be useful in determining the age groups of neighboring stars as the former's predictable lifecycle allows them to be used as cosmic clocks.
Iridium Communications CEO Matt Desch posted on Twitter that he was confident that the Falcon 9 rocket would finally succeed in taking off this Friday.