The asteroid belt is 1.8 AU away from Earth, or 167 million miles. Imagine you were traveling in a spacecraft and going about 25,000 miles per hour. It would take you about 9 months to travel from Earth to the Asteroid Belt in a spacecraft.

Asteroids can be as big as 600 miles in diameter or as small as a particle of dust. About 3/40 of the Earth could fit inside the biggest asteroid. Asteroids have irregular shapes. They are all different, and none of them are round and a perfect sphere.

Asteroids do not produce their own light. When we see asteroids in the sky, it is because light is reflecting off the asteroid.  The surface temperature of an asteroid changes when the asteroid is closer to, or further from, the Sun. The average surface temperature of an asteroid is -100°F. This is about 1.7 times colder than the average temperature on Earth.