Asteroid Belt
Could We Use Mars as a Base for Asteroid Mining?
The earliest mention of asteroid mining might be in a story from 1898 titled "Edison's Conquest of Mars," by Garrett…
This is What the Metal Asteroid Psyche Might Look Like
If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt…
Ceres Probably Formed Farther out in the Solar System and Migrated Inward
When Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi spotted Ceres in 1801, he thought it was a planet. Astronomers didn't know about asteroids…
The Building Blocks of Earth Could Have Come From Farther out in the Solar System
Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago via accretion. Earth's building blocks were chunks of rock of varying sizes. From…
Images of 42 of the Biggest Asteroids in the Solar System
A huge team of astronomers have combined forces to use the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to…
Scientists Figure out how the Asteroid Belt Attacked the Dinosaurs
How do you track an asteroid that hit the Earth over 60 million years ago? By using a combination of…
Two Bizarre red Asteroids Somehow Migrated From the Kuiper Belt all the way to the Main Asteroid Belt
If asked to pick what color asteroids in the asteroid belt would be, red is likely not one that would…
Success! OSIRIS-REx Touches Asteroid Bennu to Collect Samples
Out in the asteroid belt, 207 million miles (334 million km) from Earth, a little spacecraft briefly touched down on…
Bennu is Constantly Getting Sandblasted by Tiny Meteoroids
As soon as the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, there was a big surprise. Scientists expected…
New Images of the “Golf Ball” Asteroid Pallas
New images of the asteroid Pallas (the clearest and most detailed to date) reveal that it looks like a "golf…