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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. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets .
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 ]
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 ...
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
Called a "mini-moon" of sorts by some, it temporarily entered Earth's orbit on Sept. 29 from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which follows a similar orbital path around the sun as the Earth.
Objects between Mars' zone of influence and the main asteroid belt: 69230 Hermes: 1.654: Apollo asteroid, Venus-crosser asteroid, Mars-crosser asteroid (29075) 1950 DA: 1.698: Apollo asteroid, Mars-crosser asteroid (154276) 2002 SY 50: 1.706: Apollo asteroid, Venus-crosser asteroid, Mars-crosser asteroid (89959) 2002 NT 7: 1.735: Apollo ...
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 asteroid's path drastically will be altered by Earth's gravity once it zips by. Instead of circling the sun every 359 days, it will move into an oval orbit lasting 425 days, according to NASA.