Near-Earth Asteroids: These are the objects that have orbits that pass close to the Earth. In 2011, NASA announced the discovery of an Earth trojan. Both Mars and Neptune have large numbers of trojan asteroids. The Trojans around Jupiter have the largest population. This balance keeps them from flying out into orbit. Their location puts them in a unique position of being balanced between the gravitational pull of the sun and the planet that they orbit around. Trojans: These are the asteroids that share an orbit with a larger planet but aren’t in danger of colliding because they are in only two special orbital locations called L4 and L5 Lagrangian points. The asteroid belt is estimated to have between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids in it that are bigger than. Main Asteroid Belt: A majority of the known asteroids can be fund orbiting between Jupiter and Mars in the asteroid belt. Their origins, combined with their current location divides them into three classifications: Scientists have been studying asteroids for many years and have theorized that they exist in three different areas of the solar system. V-type asteroids such as Vesta, have a basaltic, volcanic crust. There are other more rare asteroid types that are made up of different compositions.
Some of these asteroids experienced high temperatures after they formed and partly melted, with iron sinking to the center and forcing basaltic (volcanic) lava to the surface. These asteroids are made up of a lot of different materials, depending upon how far away from the sun that they were formed. They range in color from reddish to greenish and make up about 17% of the known asteroids. The S-types (“stony”) are made up of silicate materials and nickel-iron. They are mostly made up of silicate rocks and clay, and have a dark appearance.
C-type asteroids make up 75% of the known asteroids. The C-type (chondrite) asteroids are most common and the most ancient objects in our solar system. The current number of known asteroids is 795,722.Īsteroids are divided up into three broad composition classes: C-, S-, and M-types and one V-type. It’s thought that this process not only emptied the asteroids but replenished the originating Asteroid Belt with new ones. This movement might have been responsible for throwing asteroids throughout the growing Solar System, causing them to hit the various terrestrial planets. Some of the more recent theories of asteroid development include the Grand Tack and the Nice Model that suggest that our gas giant planets did a lot of moving around prior to settling to their current positions. It’s thought that the powerful gravity from Jupiter helps to keep them in the asteroid belt and in doing so, protects our Earth from the onslaught of constant asteroid collisions.Īlthough asteroids are believed to be smaller objects, scientists believe that there are nearing 200 asteroids that are known to be larger than 100 km in diameter. This is a band where hundreds of thousands of asteroids remain.
The biggest percentage of asteroids exist between Jupiter and Mars in the Asteroid Belt. If you added up all of the asteroids they would have a mass that was less than our moon. Basic Asteroid Statistics:Īsteroids range in size from the largest, Vesta, that is around 329 mi/530 km in diameter to those that are 33 ft/10 m or smaller across. Airless, they exist as ancient space debris, orbiting between the main asteroid belt and Jupiter and Mars. Many of these were mistaken for small planets in the past, as some orbit the sun.Ī majority of asteroids are rocky leftovers from the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Asteroids are objects made up of mostly metals and rocks.
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