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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.
2867 Šteins (provisional designation 1969 VC) is an irregular, diamond-shaped background asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 4 November 1969 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnij on the Crimean ...
[56] [60] [61] During this primary depletion period, the effects of the giant planets and planetary embryos left the asteroid belt with a total mass equivalent to less than 1% that of the Earth, composed mainly of small planetesimals. [59] This is still 10–20 times more than the current mass in the main belt, which is now about 0.0005 M E. [62]
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]
Another 8% of the Earth meteorites can be traced to the Flora and Nysa asteroid families in the main asteroid belt, the research found. And about 6% of the meteorites can be traced to Vesta, it ...
Dinkinesh is the second binary main-belt asteroid explored by spacecraft, after 243 Ida by Galileo in 1993. The Dinkinesh binary system resembles the 65803 Didymos near-Earth asteroid binary system in size and composition, but differs in location from the Sun, which allows scientists to compare the nature of binary asteroids in different ...
Earth is about to get a new neighbor in the form of an asteroid. But this one won't be making an impact. Instead, it'll be what space enthusiasts have dubbed a mini-moon, and it will stick around ...
The Kuiper belt is a great ring of debris similar to the asteroid belt, but consisting mainly of objects composed primarily of ice. [195] It extends between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. It is composed mainly of small Solar System bodies, although the largest few are probably large enough to be dwarf planets. [ 196 ]