Asteroid Science

Asteroid impacts are less frequent today than they were in the early solar system, Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New

Asteroids are small, rocky bodies that orbit the sun.Most asteroids occupy the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, which is anywhere from 2.1 AU 1.95 x 10 8 miles or 3.15 x 10 8 kilometers to 3.2 AU 3.0 x 10 8 miles or 4.8 x 10 8 kilometers from the sun.. There are more than 1 million known asteroids source NASA.They are irregularly shaped and vary in size from a

Asteroids are flying space rocks occasionally featured in sci-fi movies and perhaps in our low-level fears of going the way of the dinosaurs. But just what are these potato-shaped chunks of rock

Explore the 3D world of Asteroids, Comets and NEOs. Learn about past and future missions, tracking and predicting orbits, and close approaches to Earth.

Scientists can learn a great deal about an asteroid's orbit, rotation, size, shape, and metal concentration. Asteroid Classifications. Main Asteroid Belt The majority of known asteroids orbit within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, generally with not very elongated orbits. The belt is estimated to contain between 1.1 and 1.9 million

NASA's real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system. Main Asteroid Belt The majority of known asteroids orbit within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, generally with not very elongated orbits. The belt is estimated to contain

asteroid, any of a host of small bodies, about 1,000 km 600 miles or less in diameter, that orbit the Sun primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in a nearly flat ring called the asteroid belt. It is because of their small size and large numbers relative to the major planets that asteroids are also called minor planets. The two designations have been used interchangeably, though the

An asteroid is a minor planetan object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified cometthat orbits within the inner Solar System or is co-orbital Asteroids and the asteroid belt are a staple of science fiction stories. Asteroids play several potential roles in science fiction as places human beings might

Then, the Dawn spacecraft traveled to the asteroid belt in 2011. It orbited and studied the giant asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. In 2016, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to study an asteroid near Earth named Bennu. After studying Bennu for a few years, OSIRIS-REx scooped up a sample of dust and rocks from the asteroid's

Asteroid science covers three central themes namely geohistory that has shaped the origins of our solar-system, surface processes that resulted in the formation of complex organics, a pre-requisite for life on Earth and finally asteroid observation and impact studies.