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The identified objects are of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, and, on average, are about one million kilometers (or six hundred thousand miles) apart. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System. [1]
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 asteroid belt contains tens of thousands, possibly millions, of objects over one kilometer in diameter. [141] Despite this, the total mass of the asteroid belt is unlikely to be more than a thousandth of that of Earth. [40] The asteroid belt is very sparsely populated; spacecraft routinely pass through without incident. [142]
Earth is saying goodbye to an asteroid that has been a "mini-moon" of sorts ... from the Arjuna asteroid belt, ... object must reach Earth at a range around 2.8 million miles and at a steady space ...
The object orbits the Sun but makes slow close approaches to the Earth–Moon system. Between 29 September (19:54 UTC) and 25 November 2024 (16:43 UTC) (a period of 1 month and 27 days) [4] it passed just outside Earth's Hill sphere (roughly 0.01 AU [1.5 million km; 0.93 million mi]) at a low relative velocity (in the range 0.002 km/s (4.5 mph) – 0.439 km/s [980 mph]) and will become ...
In contrast, the Lunar distance (LD or ), or Earth–Moon characteristic distance, is a unit of measure in astronomy. More technically, it is the semi-major axis of the geocentric lunar orbit . The lunar distance is on average approximately 385,000 km (239,000 mi), or 1.28 light-seconds ; this is roughly 30 times Earth's diameter or 9.5 times ...
The 2024 PT5 "mini-moon" asteroid will soon be in Earth's orbit. ... orbit Earth before returning to an asteroid belt and continue revolving around the sun. ... reach Earth at a range around 2.8 ...
It has an Earth minimum orbital intersection distance of approximately 0.0025 AU (374,000 km; 232,000 mi), corresponding to 0.98 lunar distances. [ 1 ] As a result, it is one of the most easily accessible objects in the Solar System, [ 9 ] and its orbit frequently brings it on a path very similar to the optimum Earth – Mars transfer orbit. [ 1 ]