The Asteroid Belt The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud

    The vast majority of asteroids in the solar system are found in a region of the solar system out beyond Mars. They form the Asteroid Belt. Others orbit in near-Earth space and a few migrate or are thrown out to the outer solar system by gravitational interactions. The four largest asteroids in the belt are Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. They contain half the mass of the entire belt. The rest of the mass is contained in countless smaller bodies. There was a theory once that if you combined all the asteroids they would make up the missing "Fifth" rocky planet. Planetary scientists estimate that if you could put all that material together that exists there today, it would make a tiny world smaller than Earth's moon.

    Where is the Asteroid Belt Located?
      The Asteroid Belt is located in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. The belt is about 1 AU thick. The average distance between objects in the Asteroid Belt is quite large. If you could stand on an asteroid and look around, the next one would be too far away to see very well.

    Asteroid Belt Facts
    • Asteroid Belt objects are made of rock and stone. Some are solid objects, while others are orbiting "rubble piles".
    • The Asteroid Belt contains billions and billions of asteroids.
    • Some asteroids in the Belt are quite large, but most range in size down to pebbles.
    • The asteroid 1/Ceres is also designated as a dwarf planet, the largest one in the inner solar system.
    • There are at least 7,000 asteroids (that are known).
    • The Asteroid Belt may contain many objects, but they are spread out over a huge area of space. This has allowed spacecraft to move through this region without hitting anything.
    • Asteroids get their names from suggestions by their discoverers and are also given a number.
    • The formation of Jupiter disrupted the formation of any worlds in the Asteroid Belt region by scattering asteroids away. This caused them to collide and break into smaller pieces.
    • Gravitational influences can move asteroids out of the Belt.
    • The Asteroid Belt is often referred to as the "Main Belt" to distinguish it from other groups of asteroids such as the Lagrangians and Centaurs.
    • Science Fiction Books - Asteroid Belt
        Asimov, Isaac (writing as Paul French)
        Lucky Starr
        1. Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
        - Synopsis -
          A year has passed since the events in David Starr, Space Ranger. In that time the spaceship TSS Waltham Zachary has been taken and gutted by pirates based in the asteroid belt, and David "Lucky" Starr has devised a plan whereby the unmanned survey ship Atlas, as soon as the pirates capture it and bring it to their hidden base, will explode. Because Starr harbors a personal dislike of the pirates for their murder of his parents, he sneaks aboard the Atlas to take revenge.

          When captured, Starr tells the pirate leader, Captain Anton, that his name is Williams (his alias from David Starr, Space Ranger), and offers to join the pirates; whereupon Anton has Starr fight a duel in open space to prove himself worthy. Starr wins the duel, but remains a prisoner aboard Atlas while it is brought to an anonymous asteroid.

          The asteroid is home to a hermit named Joseph Patrick Hansen, and the pirates leave Starr in Hansen's care. Hansen tells Starr that he purchased the asteroid as a vacation site, and gradually made it more comfortable over the years, but now depends on the pirates for supplies, and later recognizes the pretended "Williams" as Lawrence Starr's son. Starr admits his true identity, and Hansen convinces him to pilot them to Ceres.

          On Ceres, Starr plans to send his friend Bigman to infiltrate the pirates, but realizes that Hansen's asteroid is not where it should be. Starr and Bigman take their own spaceship Shooting Starr to search for it and eventually land on its surface, where Starr is captured by Dingo, the pirate he beat in the duel. Dingo takes him inside the asteroid, revealing a hyperatomic engine used to move it. A fight with Dingo ends when Starr is struck with a neuronic whip and loses consciousness.

          Starr wakes to find himself in a spacesuit on the surface of the asteroid; whereupon Dingo straps him to a catapult and flings him into space. He uses his oxygen reserve to reverse his course and return to the asteroid, where he and Bigman defeat some of the pirates. As they leave the pirates' asteroid, they learn that a pirate fleet is attacking Ceres.

          Returning to Ceres, Starr realizes that the pirates' real object was to capture Hansen, which they have accomplished, and learns that Captain Anton's ship is taking Hansen to a secret Sirian base on Ganymede, whence the Sirians plan to attack Earth while Earth's fleet is occupied fighting the pirates in the Asteroid Belt. Although Anton has a 12-hour head start, Starr passes him to Ganymede by skimming the Shooting Starr past the Sun, wearing the Martian "Space Ranger" mask to ward off the heat and radiation.

          When Anton makes for Ganymede, Starr threatens to ram his ship, and accelerates toward it, all the while talking to Anton. The ships are ten miles apart when Hansen kills Anton and orders Anton's crew to surrender to Starr.

          When the Terran fleet arrives to take custody of the pirate ship, Starr convinces the commanding admiral to concentrate on the asteroid pirates and leave the Sirian base on Ganymede alone, revealing that Hansen is the leader of the asteroid pirates. It is then revealed that while Starr was intercepting Anton's ship, the Council of Science, on Starr's orders, captured the base and achieved the wherewithal to terminate the asteroid piracy. Hansen is coerced to have the Sirians leave Ganymede, and is sent to incarceration on Mercury. Afterwards, Starr reveals that the matter between him and Hansen was not just about the latter being the pirate mastermind, but a far more personal one. Hansen claimed to have met David's father, but didn't recognize his two close friends (despite the three being all but inseparable), and claimed that David resembles his father the most when he is angry, despite Lawrence hardly ever being in that state. From that, David states that within an hour after meeting Hansen, he knew he was facing not his father's acquaintance, but his parents' murderer.

        Corey, James S. A. (pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
        Expanse Series
        1. Leviathan Wakes (2011)
        2. Caliban's War (2012)
        3. Abaddon's Gate (2013)
        4. Cibola Burn (2014)
        5. Nemesis Games (2015)
        6. Babylon's Ashes (2016)
        7. Persepolis Rising (2017)
        8. Tiamat's Wrath (2018)
        9. Leviathan Falls (2021)
        - Synopsis -
          The Expanse is set in a future in which humanity has colonized much of the Solar System, but does not have interstellar travel. In the asteroid belt and beyond, tensions are rising between Earth's United Nations, Mars and the outer planets. The series initially takes place in the solar system, using many real world locations such as Ceres and Eros in the asteroid belt, several moons of Jupiter, with Ganymede and Europa the most developed and small science bases as far out as Phoebe around Saturn and Titania around Uranus. There are also well established, domed settlements on Mars and the Moon.

          As the series progresses, humanity gains access to thousands of new worlds by use of the ring, an artificially sustained Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormhole, created by a long dead alien race. The ring in our solar system is 2 AU from the orbit of Uranus and passing through it leads to a hub of starless space approximately one million kilometers (621,371.2 miles) across, with more than 1,300 other rings, each with a star system on the other side. In the center of the hub, which is also referred to as the 'slow zone', there is an alien space station that controls the gates and can also set instantaneous speed limits on objects inside of the hub as a means of defense.

    Asteroid Mining
    • The solar system contains many different types of asteroids, grouped by the minerals they contain. The abundances of precious metals such as nickel, iron, and titanium (to name a few), and water make asteroids an attractive target for mining operations when humans decide to expand their presence through interplanetary space. For example, water from asteroids could serve colonies in space, while the minerals and metals would be used to build habitats and grow food for future space colony inhabitants. Beginning 2013, companies interested in asteroid mining began announcing their plans for future operations on distant planetoids. In addition, NASA is looking into similar missions. The biggest obstacles to asteroid mining are the need to develop affordable spaceflight technology that would allow humans to get to the asteroids of interest.