Scientists have long suspected that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, had an underground layer of ice, the result of an ancient ocean that froze eons ago. But last month, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft neared the end of its 7.5-year journey to the dwarf planet, they were startled to find that something bright -- ice or salt perhaps -- was glinting on the surface. "There's likely something that is highly reflective, or at least more highly reflective on the surface than the rest of the surrounding area," Mike Miller, vice president for science programs with satellite manufacturer Orbital ATK, told Discovery News. "This could be fresh material that's just recently been brought to the surface, or it could have been an impact that brought certain chemicals to that particular crater," add Joe Makowski, Orbital's Dawn program manager. VIDEO: Pluto Flyby and Black Holes: Top Space Events for 2015 Extrapolating from Ceres’ round shape and relatively low density, computer models indicate Ceres has a rocky core and icy mantle, covered by a layer of dust, clays and deposits. “Ceres is lighter than the rocky planets, meaning that it retained a lot of water and light volatile elements that were present in the solar nebula when Ceres was formed ... In contrast, bodies like the moon and (the asteroid) Vesta, have melted and boiled off the water and the light elements, leaving them dry and rocky,” said Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy lead scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That makes Ceres a lot like Europa and Enceladus, two of Jupiter’s icy moons that are believed to harbor underground oceans. NEWS: Hunt for Dwarf Planet Ceres' Mysterious Water Begins With moderate heating from the decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements, “we expect that in the past that there was ocean in Ceres in contact with the rock beneath an ice cap,” Raymond said. And that raises the prospect that Ceres had conditions and chemistry suitable for microbial life to evolve. “We expect that (Ceres) had astrobiological potential,” Raymond told Discovery News. http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/mysterious-dwarf-planet-ceres-may-be-ripe-for-life-150305.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1