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The upper diagram shows Ceres's orbit from top down. The bottom diagram is a side view showing Ceres's orbital inclination to the ecliptic. Lighter shades indicate above the ecliptic; darker indicate below. 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]
However, Ceres (r = 470 km) is the smallest body for which detailed measurements are consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium, [8] whereas Iapetus (r = 735 km) is the largest icy body that has been found to not be in hydrostatic equilibrium. [9]
Satellites in geostationary orbit. From the list in the first section, these are the closest known asteroids per year that approach Earth within one lunar distance.More than one asteroid per year may be listed if its geocentric distance [note 1] is within a tenth of the lunar distance, or 0.10 LD.
First asteroid discovered from space; source of Geminids meteor shower. 3753 Cruithne: 5: October 10, 1986: Unusual Earth-associated orbit 4179 Toutatis: 4.5×2.4×1.9: January 4, 1989: Closely approached Earth on September 29, 2004 4769 Castalia: 1.8×0.8: August 9, 1989: First asteroid to be radar-imaged in sufficient detail for 3D modeling ...
In 2016, astronomers spotted an asteroid about the size of a ferris wheel in an Earth-like orbit around the Sun. Turns out it's actually a chunk of the moon.
Giuseppe Piazzi, discoverer of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt: Ceres was known as a planet, but later reclassified as an asteroid and from 2006 as a dwarf planet. On January 1, 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi , chairman of astronomy at the University of Palermo , Sicily, found a tiny moving object in an orbit with exactly the radius ...
The spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It went into orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. Dawn performed near-global geological, chemical, and geophysical mapping of Ceres [ 8 ] until its hydrazine fuel was depleted on October 31, 2018.
This is a list of space probes that have left Earth orbit (or were launched with that intention but failed), organized by their planned destination. It includes planetary probes, solar probes, and probes to asteroids and comets, but excludes lunar missions, which are listed separately at List of lunar probes and List of Apollo missions.