The Asteroid Belt

space · solar system · rocks

A ring of rocks. The asteroid belt is a donut-shaped region of space between Mars and Jupiter packed with thousands of rocky objects called asteroids or minor planets. They're all much smaller than Earth's moon, and most are millions of kilometers apart from each other.

Never became a planet. Scientists believe the asteroid belt is made of leftover material from when our solar system was forming billions of years ago. Instead of clumping together to make a new planet, these rocks stayed spread out and never joined into one big body.

All different shapes. Asteroids in the belt come in all sorts of wild, bumpy shapes because they're not round like planets. They range in size from tiny pebbles to objects hundreds of kilometers wide, making the belt like a cosmic treasure chest of variety.

Super far apart. Even though the belt has thousands of asteroids, they're spread out so much that you could fly a spaceship through it without hitting anything. On average, asteroids are about one million kilometers away from each other, so it's mostly empty space.