Asteroid Belt: Deped Belt Between Mars And Jupiter

Mars has been an enigma in the human mind for centuries. Civilizations studied the planet as it traversed the sky, believing it to be an ethereal power. Even today, the planet fascinates both the scientific and public viewpoint. Many movies and books are set on Mars, including H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds and Andy Weir’s The Martian. Both novels increase public interest in the celestial body by “humanizing” the planet with the presence of intelligent lifeforms and introducing the need for familiarity beyond Earth. The need for familiarity has led governmental space agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency, to launch missions to Mars. Internationally, forty-three missions have studied

The asteroid belt is a huge orbit of asteroids. Its located between mars and jupiter. Most of our solar systems asteroids are in the asteroid belt, but some escaped or got knocked out. Asteroids come in all different shapes and sizes, most are the size of a pebble. Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea are the four biggest asteroids. Ceres is actually considered a dwarf planet. Some people think that if you combine all the asteroids it would create a small, rocky, planet, but astronomers say it would make a planet smaller then earths moon. Suprizingly the asteroids are pretty far apart. If you stood on a asteroid then you would barely be able to see any other asteroids.

The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects are remnants of the formation of the solar system. According the the Nice model, the Kuiper belt was once closer to the Sun and much more dense, but was pushed outward by the Jovian planets massive gravitation pull. The Oort Cloud formed, supposedly, from the Jovian planets' gravity as well, because objects and debris that was close enough to the planets were flung outside of the solar system, far enough away from the influence of their gravity. Once these objects are far enough away, their orbit continued around the Sun. Both were made from the original debris in the cloud that formed our solar system.

As one may know, astronomy is a branch of science used to study objects exterior to the Earth’s atmosphere. There are a wide variety of topics in astronomy that have been studied by astronomers for years, which is interesting to learn about because which individual would not aspire to learn about how the universe originated? Or what objects exists in space? One of the topics that are quite interesting to learn regarding astronomy is the Kuiper Belt.

The reading on terrestrial planets from chapter 6 provides readers with a little insight on the similarities and differences between the planets. These planets include Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars. Although these planets have very different properties, they are connected due to their history. There are scientific laws that help people understand, compare, and contrast these planets, such as gravity, chemical composition, and temperature.

The Kuiper Belt is a ‘belt-like’ disc in our outer Solar System that extends from the orbit of Neptune at about 30 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun to approximately 50 AU [1]. It is like a larger version of the asteroid belt, and is mostly made up of remnants of the formation of our Solar system [2]. As the Kuiper Belt gets further away from the Sun, it also becomes denser. At its section that should be the densest it instead stops suddenly, and this abrupt ending is known as the Kuiper Cliff. The reason for this dramatic falloff is thus unknown [3], but there is one interesting theory. Patryk Lykawka of Kobe University claims that the gravitational pull of a so far unseen planet may be responsible for the behavior of the Kuiper Belt.

It is the leftover material that did not get swept into the sun or flung far out into the galaxy but was just far enough away to stay in the sun’s orbit. The Kuiper Belt is a donut or disc shaped area made up of mostly icy or Frozen Volatiles (gases) and some rocky objects that orbit our sun starting just outside of Neptune’s orbit. The donut shaped area spans from 30 to 50 times Earth’s distance from the sun which is 2.5 to 4.5 billion miles. The distance is also reported in astronomical units, Shortened as AU. One AU is the distance of the Earth to the Sun. Thus, the Kuiper Belt spans from about 30 to 50 AU. The Kuiper Belt contains trillions of these icy or rocky objects with thousands being larger objects more than 62 miles in diameter. The Kuiper belt also contains round objects too small to be considered a planet but too large to be considered an asteroid. These objects are classified as dwarf planets. Dwarf planets also have an odd orbit and don’t clear the space around them like regular planets. The best known KBO is the dwarf planet Pluto. Interestingly, when Pluto was first identified, astronomers did not realize it was in the Kuiper Belt, since the Kuiper Belt was officially identified after Pluto was

Space. The final frontier. There are approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the universe with many solar systems in each galaxy and many planets within those solar systems (How do we…). The Milky Way Galaxy is close to 100,000 light years in diameter(Diep) with each light year spanning 5.87849981 x 10^12 miles . In comparison, the earth is only 7,917.5 miles in diameter(Coffey). Within and on the earth itself, there are still great mysteries, and so it comes as no surprise that a giant area such as space holds so much mystery. One of the most recent fascinations to astronomers has been asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and comets. These space rocks are found

The Mars One Company, is scamming its supporters millions of dollars into a fake mission! The Mars One project has remained for awhile as a legitimate company, but experts and scammed donors have found majour flaws in the Mars One Mission. Many of the experts have found several errors and discrepancies when they more closely examined the Company. This in turn has led many to conclude that Mars One is not a legitimate space agency, and people should not be investing time, resources, and money into this untrustworthy company.

Mars a small, reddish planet that is the fourth in order from the Sun and is periodically visible to the naked eye. Mars is the second-smallest planet in the solar system only Mercury is smaller. In comparison to Earth, Mars is about half (53 percent) the size of Earth, but considering Mars is a desert planet, it has the same amount of dry land as Earth. Mars has a diameter of 4, 222 miles (6, 794 km), but from pole to pole the diameter would be 4,196 mile (6,752 km). Also, of course the radius of Mars would be half of the diameter. The circumference of Mars around the equator is approximately 13,000 miles (21, 342 km), but from pole-to-pole Mars is only 13,200 miles (21,144 km) around. This shape is called an oblate spheroid, an oblate

Bottke, W.F., Vokrouhlick´y, D., Rubincam, D.P., & Broˇz, M.: 2002, in: W.F. Bottke, A. Cellino, P. Paolicchi & R.P. Binzel (eds.), Asteroids III (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press), p. 395-408.

Physical characteristics of the Mars is half the diameter of the Earth, less dense than Earth. Mars' rotational period is similar to the Earth rotation. Another interesting facts about Mars is that, it has two Moons which are Deimos and Phobos. Deimos and Phobos are small and irregular shape. Also, Mars have largest volcano and second highest known mountain and largest canyon in the Solar System. Largest volcano and highest mountain is Olympus Mons, it has a height of 25 km and it is three times as tall as Mount Everest. Largest canyon is Valles Marineris is more than 4000 km long , 200 km wide, and up to 7 km deep. It is located along the equator of the Mars. Second interesting facts about the Mars except the similarities to the Earth, is the findings on the

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system, it also the fifth planet that count from the Sun. There are many interesting facts about Jupiter’s atmosphere. Jupiter has the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar system. The composition of the atmosphere is mainly molecular hydrogen and helium. Although water exists deep in the atmosphere layer, the concentration is comparatively very small. (Mahaffy et al., 1998) Until now, there have been no satellites sent on to the Jupiter. Only eight spacecraft sent to bring back information. The eight spacecraft were Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini, and New Horizons. (Tritonfun, 2008) Among these eight spacecraft, five of them are from NASA. For this mission, an artificial manufactured satellite that functions as an orbiter will be send to the orbit of the Jupiter to study its enormous atmosphere and the weather on the Jupiter.

A comet in the Kuiper Belt would be affected by the presence of the planets in the solar system, not only the Sun. While the Sun has a huge mass, it is more massive than any of the planets in the solar system, it is far enough away from objects within the Kuiper Belt that its affect is comparable to the planets which lay closer. Since all planets within the solar system have significant gravitational fields (particularly the gas planets), its affect on a comet orbiting the Sun may change the shape of the comet's orbit into elliptical or other shaped paths.

When addressing the concern of an asteroid impacting the Earth, it should be noted that the probability of a continent-destroying asteroid is slim to none in the near future. It should also be addressed that approximately ten asteroids enter Earth's atmosphere per year, each being about the size of a fridge, but are burned up quickly and would not be big enough to heavily crater or harm anything on the surface. In the past 1000 years, there also have been no record of a human dying due to meteorite collisions. Though collisions are seemingly rare, it is still important for astronomers to observe any celestial objects moving towards Earth that may be potentially dangerous. For example, Apophis is an asteroid traveling a path towards Earth. The asteroid is large enough to wreck the surface of Earth, but because of the observations made by astronomers, it is highly likely that a mission can be conducted to be deflected