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For anyone interested in the asteroid belt or space exploration, this MUST SEE video offers a viewpoint of the last thirty years of our discovery of new asteroids. The text below the video is helpful. Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010 – [youtube.com] View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids [...]

Building Planets – [nasa.gov] A beautiful artistic illustration of an asteroid belt (link above) shows a common misconception of asteroid spacing that is prevalent in both science fiction and the public mind. We love to watch Hans Solo or some other pilot skilfully guide a spaceship through the clutter of an asteroid field. But in [...]

Astronomers have detected the spectrum signature of ice on an asteroid called 24 Themis in the main belt. They believe the thin coating of frost on the 200 kilometer wide rock is constantly being evaporated by the Sun and then replenished from an interior supply deep inside the rock. Astronomers Find Water On Asteroid’s Surface [...]

Dawn is a space probe that was launched in Sept of 2007 and has been thrusting it’s way toward the asteroid belt since then. It reached the edge of the main belt last November and now is poised to do some close up investigating of some of the larger asteroids. Dawn Sailing Smoothly Through The [...]

New Spacecraft Discovers Dozens of Asteroids … Every Day – [space.com] Dozens of asteroids that have been lurking undetected in our solar system are being discovered every day by NASA’s newest space telescope, scientists say. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope was designed to search for “dark” objects in space, such as brown dwarf [...]

It is possible (but not yet confirmed) that astronomers have observed a collision in the asteroid belt for the first time. Mystery Object Behaves Both Like a Comet and Asteroid – [discovery.com] Something awfully curious is happening 250 million miles away in the asteroid belt. Astronomers think they may be witnessing a never-before-seen collision between [...]

Ceres is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt and was the first asteroid ever discovered, in 1802. Recent data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the outer mantle of Ceres is frozen liquid containing ammonia and water. There is evidence that Ceres may be as much as 20% water. We will probably [...]

The Dawn probe spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral in September of 2007, used Mars as a slingshot in February of 2009 and has now reached the asteroid belt, where it will remain. Dawn Takes up Residence in Asteroid Belt – [universetoday.com] The Dawn spacecraft – which is on a course to study the asteroid [...]

In 1950, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (building on an idea originated by Ernst Opik) proposed that a hypothetical and massive cloud of comets that orbit far from the center of our solar system might explain why comets don’t seem to originate from deep space and often have an outer orbital edge about 20-50,000 AUs from [...]

Discovered in 1992, the Kuiper Belt is a large expanse of space just outside the edge of our solar system that contains a large number of small objects. This belt is similar to the asteroid belt, but is much larger, much farther away and may contain more frozen water and volatile gases than the metallic [...]