The Main Asteroid Belt is where a planet “should” be…

Our series through the solar system is taking a quick stop at the Main Asteroid Belt, which lies between Mars and the next planet from the Sun, Jupiter. It is as BIG gap!! Like over 550 million miles…

Kepler predicted a planet would be found in this large space between Mars and Jupiter, but the Main Asteroid Belt was discovered instead.

It is a doughnut shaped region centered on the Sun made of asteroids and other objects. The four largest asteroids in the belt are Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. They contain half the mass of the entire belt and the rest of the mass is contained in countless smaller bodies. Planetary scientists say that if we could smoosh (it’s a scientific word, I’m sure) all those asteroids and other objects together, it would make a tiny world smaller than our moon.

The first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt was Pioneer 10 in July 1972 and there were worries that the belt would cause problems to the spacecraft, but it made it and so did Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Ulysses and Cassini.

I’m excited about the upcoming European Space Agency’s JUICE mission since it passes through the astroid belt twice on its way to study the moons of Jupiter. If we learning something really cool, I’ll be sure to pass it along.