The NASA Pi Day Challenge Slideshow | NASA/JPL Edu

The NASA Pi Day Challenge Slideshow | NASA/JPL Edu

Pixel Puzzler

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The Dawn spacecraft is orbiting Ceres -- a nearly spherical dwarf planet with an average radius of 475 kilometers -- in a perfectly circular polar orbit. While in orbit, Dawn will snap images of Ceres’ surface to piece together a global map. From its lowest altitude orbit of 370 kilometers, Dawn’s camera can see a patch of Ceres about 26 kilometers on a side.

Assuming no overlap in the images, how many photographs would Dawn have to take to fully map the surface of Ceres?

Learn more about Dawn mission