Cosma Home > Communication > Knowledge > Realm > Physical > Universe > Solar System > Asteroid

Spotlight

Note: This is a 360° Video — press and hold to explore it!

Pages

Physical Realm
Universe Astronomical Instrument
Galaxy Milky Way, Andromeda
Planetary System Star, Brown Dwarf, Planet, Moon

Solar System Sun
Terrestrial Planet Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars
Asteroid Belt Ceres, Vesta
Jovian Planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Trans-Neptunian Object
Kuiper Belt Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
Scattered Disc Eris, Sedna, Planet X
Oort Cloud Etc. Scholz’s Star
Small Body Comet, Centaur, Asteroid

Posts

Space Rocks! (1/4/2019) - It was a fantastic holiday season for space fans! In fact, there was so much going on, it was almost impossible to keep up with it all. According to your news sources and interests, you have probably heard about at least some of the amazing things that happened, but chances are you haven’t heard about … Continue reading Space Rocks!
Get Lost in Space! (9/14/2018) - Way back in August, in anticipation of the start of a new school year, I set out to update the pages on this site related to space. Those pages tend to be popular among the teachers and students who use Cosma, and I happen to enjoy updating them, too. It sounded like a short, fun … Continue reading Get Lost in Space!
Asteroids Galore! (6/27/2018) - Head’s up! You’re going to hear a lot about asteroids over the next week or so. The good news is that none of it is related to any specific asteroid hitting us. This media blitz is due to a trifecta of asteroid related events this week. One big reason you’ll hear so much about asteroids … Continue reading Asteroids Galore!
Octopuses from Space! (5/20/2018) - Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space? It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in … Continue reading Octopuses from Space!
Asteroids Everywhere (6/30/2017) - Friday, June 30 is Asteroid Day, so you are going to be hearing a LOT about Asteroids over the next day or so (see Asteroid Day.org, NASA, YouTube and Wikipedia). The reason Asteroid Day falls on this date is because it’s the anniversary of the 1908 “Tunguska event” when scientists believe a 50 meter wide … Continue reading Asteroids Everywhere

Resources

These are organized by a classification scheme developed exclusively for Cosma. More…

General

Portal

Solar System Exploration: Asteroids (NASA)
Asteroid Things (Wikipedia)

Dictionary

asteroid : any of the small rocky celestial bodies found especially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter — Webster

OneLook, Free Dictionary, Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary

Encyclopedia

Asteroids are a class of Small Solar System Bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as small objects in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets, and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids. Thus the term asteroid has come increasingly to refer specifically to the small rocky–icy and metallic bodies of the inner Solar System out to the orbit of Jupiter. They are grouped with the outer bodies—centaurs, Neptune trojans, and trans-Neptunian objects—as minor planets, which is the term preferred in astronomical circles.

There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the often shattered remnants of planetesimals, bodies within the young Sun’s solar nebula that never grew large enough to become planets. A large majority of known asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter or co-orbital with Jupiter (the Jupiter Trojans). However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth asteroids. Individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups: C-type, S-type, and M-type. These were named after and are generally identified with carbon-rich, stony, and metallic compositions, respectively. — Wikipedia

Asteroids (Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy, Wolfram Research)
Encyclopædia Britannica

Search

WolframAlpha

Science

Planetary Defense Office (NASA)
NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation (NASA)
Planetary Defense Coordination Office, Press Release (PDCO, NASA)

Twenty Years of Tracking Near-Earth Objects (NASA/JPL)
Near-Earth Objects Internet Resources (Library of Congress)

Near-Earth Objects (Minor Planet Center, International Astronomical Union)
Near Earth Asteroids (Minor Planet Center, International Astronomical Union)
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (Minor Planet Center, International Astronomical Union)
1+ KM Near-Earth Objects (Minor Planet Center, International Astronomical Union)

OSIRIS-REx Mission (NASA)
OSIRIS Rex (Wikipedia)
101955 Bennu (NASA)
101955 Bennu (Wikipedia)

Preservation

History

The Discovery of Asteroids (ESA)

Library

WorldCat, Library of Congress, UPenn Online Books, Open Library

Participation

Education

What is an Asteroid? (Space Place, NASA)
More to Explore: Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites (NASA)
Comets, Meteors & Asteroids (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)
Asteroids (Cosmos4Kids)

Course

Crash Course Astronomy (YouTube)

OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Community

Government

Document

USA.gov

Expression

Fun

The Great Asteroid of 1998 (FailBook)

Poem

OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

More…

Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine.

Solar system formation in two steps
on January 21, 2021 at 7:00 pm
An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford, LMU Munich, ETH Zurich, BGI Bayreuth, and the University of Zurich discovered that a two-step formation process of the early Solar System can explain the chronology and split in volatile and isotope content of the inner and outer Solar System.
3-D printing to pave the way for moon colonization
on January 21, 2021 at 2:29 pm
A research team from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) comprising 2nd year Ph.D. student Maxim Isachenkov, Senior Research Scientist Svyatoslav Chugunov, Professor Iskander Akhatov, and Professor Igor Shishkovsky has prepared an extensive review on the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies (also known as 3-D-printing) in crewed lunar exploration. Their paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica contains a comprehensive description of the […]
Oldest carbonates in the solar system
on January 21, 2021 at 2:21 pm
A meteorite that fell in northern Germany in 2019 contains carbonates which are among the oldest in the solar system; it also evidences the earliest presence of liquid water on a minor planet. The high-resolution Ion Probe—a research instrument at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University—provided the measurements. The investigation by the Cosmochemistry Research Group led by Prof. Dr. Mario Trieloff was part of a consortium study coordinated by the University of Münster […]
Physicist proposes human-populated mega-satellite...
on January 20, 2021 at 2:10 pm
Physicist Pekka Janhunen with the Finnish Meteorological Institute has developed a novel idea to colonize a place other than the Earth—and it is not the moon or Mars. Instead, Janhunen is suggesting in a paper posted on the arXiv preprint server that humans populate a giant satellite that orbits Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.
Dinosaur-era sea lizard had teeth like a shark
on January 19, 2021 at 3:37 pm
New study identifies a bizarre new species suggesting that giant marine lizards thrived before the asteroid wiped them out 66 million years ago.
Asteroids vs. microbes
on January 14, 2021 at 6:35 pm
Inside one of the containers of this 40-cm-across miniature laboratory in orbit, a battle is set to start between asteroid-like fragments and rock-hungry microbes, to probe their use for space mining in the future.
New Horizons spacecraft answers the question: How...
on January 12, 2021 at 8:54 pm
How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can't count them, their light suffuses space with a feeble glow.
Reconstructing the solar system's original...
on January 12, 2021 at 1:19 pm
As the solar system was developing, the giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) formed very early, and as they grew, they migrated both closer to and further away from the sun to stay in gravitationally stable orbits.
Evidence of water movement found in meteorites...
on January 8, 2021 at 3:20 pm
A team of researchers affiliated with institutions in Australia, the U.S. and France has found evidence of relatively recent water movement in meteorites that only recently collided with the Earth. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorites that landed on the surface of the Earth within the past century and what they found.
NASA's first mission to the Trojan asteroids...
on January 5, 2021 at 9:07 pm
NASA's Lucy mission is one step closer to launch as L'TES, the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer, has been successfully integrated on to the spacecraft.