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The total mass of the asteroid belt is significantly less than Pluto's, and roughly twice that of Pluto's moon Charon. The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars.
Earth has two such belts, and sometimes others may be temporarily created. The belts are named after James Van Allen, who published an article describing the belts in 1958. [1] [2] Earth's two main belts extend from an altitude of about 640 to 58,000 km (400 to 36,040 mi) [3] above the surface, in which region radiation levels vary.
Vesta orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, within the asteroid belt, with a period of 3.6 Earth years, [6] specifically in the inner asteroid belt, interior to the Kirkwood gap at 2.50 AU. Its orbit is moderately inclined ( i = 7.1°, compared to 7° for Mercury and 17° for Pluto ) and moderately eccentric ( e = 0.09, about the same as for ...
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [16] [17] [18] An astronomical unit, or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [19]
The object is part of the Arjuna asteroid belt. Speaking to Space.com, Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos — one of the people who discovered the mini-moon ...
The inner Solar System's period of giant impacts probably played a role in Earth acquiring its current water content (~6 × 10 21 kg) from the early asteroid belt. Water is too volatile to have been present at Earth's formation and must have been subsequently delivered from outer, colder parts of the Solar System. [ 63 ]
The impactor likely formed in the outer solar system before migrating to the asteroid belt. A team of researchers think they know the origin of a massive space rock that hit Earth and killed off ...
True-scale Solar System poster made by Emanuel Bowen in 1747. At that time, Uranus, Neptune, nor the asteroid belts had been discovered yet. Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". [1]