Ceres is an embryonic planet, ... Gravitational perturbations from Jupiter billions of years ago prevented Ceres from accreting more material to become a full-fledged planet.

Would we want to do the same thing to a different type of comet? I don't want to answer that question until we have analyzed the results from this comet. It depends on what picture we piece together from observing beneath this comet's surface,

It would be helpful to have a similar type of mission go to an asteroid and compare the results, ... That mission is Deep Interior. It has been proposed in the past to NASA's Discovery program, but has not been accepted.

I'm terribly excited. We're all jumping up and down. I'm pleased that NASA hasn't given up on science altogether.

When we planned our experiment, we estimated how long it would take for the dust to fall back onto the comet, and multiplied that estimate by 4. We only had a limited time to observe because this was all happening at relative speeds of 22,000 miles per hour. To our surprise, the dust never cleared!

There's something that's keeping it from collapsing on itself.