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By far the largest object within the belt is the dwarf planet Ceres. 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 ...
This list includes few examples since there are about 589 asteroids in the asteroid belt with a measured radius between 20 and 49 km. [171] Many thousands of objects of this size range have yet to be discovered in the trans-Neptunian region.
The presence of liquid water has astrobiological significance as any extant water may provide a habitat for life. Ceres orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.77 astronomical units (AU), near the center of the asteroid belt. It receives only 15% of the solar energy as Earth and has a maximum daytime temperature at the equator of 243 K (−30 °C).
Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, near the middle of the asteroid belt, with an orbital period (year) of 4.6 Earth years. [2] Compared to other planets and dwarf planets, Ceres's orbit is moderately tilted relative to that of Earth; its inclination ( i ) is 10.6°, compared to 7° for Mercury and 17° for Pluto.
First likely dwarf planet visited by a spacecraft, largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft 4 Vesta: 525.4: March 29, 1807: Dawn: 2011–2012: 210: 0.76: Dawn broke orbit on 5 September 2012 and headed to Ceres, where it arrived in March 2015: First "big four" asteroid visited by a spacecraft, largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft at the ...
Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is an "ocean world" with a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface, scientists said in findings that raise ...
The largest of them, dubbed 2002 NV16, is 580ft (177m) across and will reach a minimum distance of 4.5 million km (2.8 million miles) from Earth at around 3.50pm UTC.
An asteroid the size of a house sped past Earth at 2,000mph (7200km/h) on Sunday, June 25. The Virtual Telescope Project by Gianluca Masi in Italy recorded footage showing the near-Earth object ...