SOLAR SYSTEM

Detailed explanation-1: -Apollo asteroids spend most of their time outside Earth orbit. Many of these are economically attractive in the near term. Technically, they have wider orbits than Earth. Aten asteroids–whose orbits also cross Earth’s orbit, but unlike Apollos, Atens spend most of their time inside Earth orbit.

Detailed explanation-2: -Of the roughly one million known asteroids the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 AU from the Sun, in the main asteroid belt. Asteroids are generally classified to be of three types: C-type, M-type, and S-type.

Detailed explanation-3: -There are over 30, 503 known near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and over a hundred known short-period near-Earth comets (NECs). A number of solar-orbiting meteoroids were large enough to be tracked in space before striking Earth.

Detailed explanation-4: -The four largest asteroids in the belt are called Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. These large asteroids make up about half of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Scientists like to say that if you combined all of these rocky asteroids together, it would make a planet a bit smaller than Earth’s moon.