Asteroids

space · Solar System · rocks

Space rubble. Asteroids are rocky, metallic, or icy chunks that orbit the Sun. They're bigger than tiny meteoroids but not big enough to be planets.

Tiny to titanic. Some are loose piles of rubble less than a kilometer wide, while Ceres is almost 1,000 km across, so big it's also called a dwarf planet!

Three flavors. Scientists sort asteroids into C-type (carbon-rich), M-type (metallic), and S-type (rocky and silica-rich).

No air at all. Asteroids have no atmosphere, so there's nothing to breathe and no weather on their surfaces.

Almost a comet. If an object grows a glowing tail when warmed by the Sun, it's called a comet instead of an asteroid, but the two can blur together.