Once thought to be the debris of a destroyed planet, the asteroid belt is now understood as a region shaped by gravity, collisions and the powerful influence of Jupiter. Studying it helps scientists ...

Lying between Mars and Jupiter is a massive ring of rock debris—the asteroid belt. Now thin, it’s fading away gradually. In a new study, planetary scientist Julio A. Fernández of Uruguay’s Universidad ...

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies a ring-shaped region called the asteroid belt, home to the vast majority of our solar system’s space rocks. The asteroid belt is as old as the solar system ...

Are planets in the solar system that are closer to the Sun older than the ones further away? – Gavriel, age 10, Paducah, Kentucky A cloud of collapsing gas created our Sun, the first thing to form in ...

We’ve all seen this happen in a science-fiction movie: our plucky heroes jump into their ramshackle spaceship and escape the bad guys by flying through the treacherous asteroid belt, where huge rocks ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. For decades, scientists thought that Vesta was a protoplanet rather than an asteroid. NASA's Dawn ...

Millions of asteroids, not a planet, exist in the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt's total mass is only a small fraction of the Moon's mass. Meteorite analysis suggests the asteroids didn't originate ...

A NASA spacecraft recently got an up-close look at a strange peanut-shaped space rock floating through the cosmos in the main asteroid belt. Not to worry: Astronomers aren't interested in the small ...

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will swoop past a small asteroid this weekend as it makes its way to an even bigger prize: the unexplored swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter. It will be the second asteroid ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured infant planets colliding around Fomalhaut, one of the brightest stars in the night ...

The search for an unknown planet in our solar system has inspired astronomers for more than a century. Now, a recent study suggests a potential new candidate, which the paper’s authors have dubbed ...

Two rare cosmic collisions around the young star Fomalhaut were caught by space telescopes, offering new clues about how planets form.