10 interesting things about asteroids in the solar system

Asteroid is a rock object, without air, that orbits the Sun and is too small to be called a planet.

Origin of the name

From asteroids (Asteroid) , named after English astronomer William Herschel, in Greek means "like stars" . These are stone objects that are too small to be called planets, according to Earth Sky.

Illustrating an asteroid near the Earth.(Photo: NASA).

Amount

Scientists estimate that between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids have roads greater than one kilometer in the asteroid belt in the middle of Mars and Jupiter's orbit.

Classify

Asteroids are classified into 3 types, which are carbon-rich asteroids, silicate or metal.

Size

If all of the asteroids in the solar system pool together into a sphere, it will still be smaller than the Moon.

Largest asteroid

Ceres asteroid.(Photo: NASA).

In 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer, discovered the largest Ceres asteroid in the solar system, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres is so large that its mass is one-fourth of the estimated total mass of all asteroids in the asteroid belt. Today, Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet.

Mission to explore asteroids

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) plans to carry out the mission to explore asteroid 16 completely made of iron and nickel metal in the asteroid belt in 2022.

Asteroids near the Earth

The asteroid near the Earth is an asteroid located less than 44 million kilometers from Earth's orbit. As of June 2017, scientists discovered all 16,209 near-Earth asteroids, of which 1,803 asteroids are potentially dangerous.

The number of asteroids flying through the Earth's atmosphere

Each year there is usually an asteroid by car that collides with Earth's atmosphere, creating a giant fireball and being burned before reaching the ground.

Approaching asteroids

The Eros asteroid was taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft from a height of about 200km.(Photo: NASA).

Some of NASA's space missions flew and observed asteroids. For example, the Shoemaker NEAR spacecraft mission landed on the Eros asteroid in 2001. Dawn's mission first flew in orbit around the asteroid in 2011. Currently, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on his way to an asteroid near Earth called Bennu . It will bring Bennu's specimen back to Earth for scientists to study.

Moon of asteroids

About 1/6 of asteroids have a small companion moon. Some even have two moons. The first discovery of the asteroid-moon system in 1993 was Ida asteroid and moon Dactyl.

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