FLYING ROCKS

There are rocks in our Solar System that never flocked together to form planets. Larger ones called asteroids gather in the Asteroid Belt, a strip found between Mars and Jupiter. Some asteroids don’t move along this belt but have paths that bring them close to the earth. These are called Apollo Asteroids.

There may be half a million asteroids whose diameters are bigger than one kilometer. The largest asteroid is over 1000 kilometers across. It is speculated that many asteroids were once larger but they collided with each other and became small fragments.

Unlike asteroids, meteoroids are small rocky bodies, that are scattered in space and do not orbit the sun. They cross the Earth’s orbit and are often seen burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere at night. The faint flashes of light they make are called shooting stars.