How do robotic space craft (Voyager, Cassini etc) get through the Asteroid belt without getting smashed by a lump of rock?
Hi there,
The answer is that the asteroid belt, like the rest of space, is mostly empty. The probability of hitting anything in space, whether you’re flying through the asteroid belt or not, is incredibly small. Believe it!
I checked some quick numbers, and the entire mass of the asteroid belt is less than 4% of our moon! So think about taking 4% of the moon, break it up into chunks, and scatter those chunks over an ENORMOUS distance, and you’ll realize why an encounter with an asteroid in the asteroid belt is not likely at all- in fact, it’s estimated at about 1 in a BILLION.
The other thing is that not all asteroids are big. The very biggest object in the asteroid belt is Ceres, about 600 miles in diameter, but most of the other stuff is a whole lot smaller, even ranging to the size of small pebbles or even dust particles.
So they just send those probes through, without detectors or anything to move them out of the way of asteroids, and nothing has hit them yet. This article verifies what I’ve told you and has some additional stuff too if you’re interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt
Hope this helps.
This artist’s animation illustrates a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Evidence for this possible belt was discovered by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope when it spotted warm dust around the star, presumably from asteroids smashing together.
The view starts from outside the belt, where planets like the one shown here might possibly reside, then moves into to the dusty belt itself. A collision between two asteroids is depicted near the end of the movie. Collisions like this replenish the dust in the asteroid belt, making it detectable to Spitzer.
The alien belt circles a faint, nearby star called HD 69830 located 41 light-years away in the constellation Puppis. Compared to our own solar system’s asteroid belt, this one is larger and closer to its star — it is 25 times as massive, and lies just inside an orbit equivalent to that of Venus. Our asteroid belt circles between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Because Jupiter acts as an outer wall to our asteroid belt, shepherding its debris into a series of bands, it is possible that an unseen planet is likewise marshalling this belt’s rubble. Previous observations using the radial velocity technique did not locate any large gas giant planets, indicating that any planets present in this system would have to be the size of Saturn or smaller.
Asteroids are chunks of rock from “failed” planets, which never managed to coalesce into full-sized planets. Asteroid belts can be thought of as construction sites that accompany the building of rocky planets.
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How did spacecrafts like Galilero survive their trip through the asteriod belt?
a. nasa sends its spacecrafts above and below the orbits of the asteroids in the belt to avoid collisions.
b. spacecraft use a magnetic repulsion tool to make sure asteroids do not come too close.
c. although there are many asteroids, they are widely spaced (there is lots of space between them)
d. the known asteroids are typically less than a centermeter across, so they do not represent a danger to spacecrafts.
e. Nasa has lost over a dozen of spacecrafts to collision of asteroids.
c … for sure cause SPACE is basically called space, because there is a whole lot of space.
statistically 5 atoms in a cube 1×1x1 meter ?
the gaps between those asteroids are in fact VERY large.
I remember a flight director stating that actually hitting mars for example is like shooting an arrow into a bulls-eye the distance from New York to Los Angeles.
so you have best chances NOT to hit anything at all
seperatly not both of them togeather
asteroid belt make a planet
and kyper belt make a planet
Interesting, but scientifically, not possible. Kyper belt = Kuiper belt.
This would be considered as a spontaneous formation since the heated temperature and nuclear processes have expired, hindering debris in these belts to fuse into larger bodies. Planet formation must occur on different principles and conditions than what exist in this epoch (or timeline).
The planets of the Solar System evolved through coalescence of bodies called planetesimals when the protosolar nebula collapsed (shortly after the sun was formed, the surrounding region was a chaotic, disk-shaped wasteland suffused with debris and excited by temperature). Progressively, it cooled and condensed, in which our special Solar System was formed and spun into orbits.
Asteroid Belt
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The Sun is around 1.8 to 4.5 A.U.s from the asteroid belt. An A.U. is the distance from the Earth to the Sun and the distance between the Earth to the Sun is 93 million miles.
I figure, it’s been a week, haven’t made any Star Fox 64 improvements, and with my accidental uninstalling of CamStudio, I can’t record new Mario World levels right now. I’ve been a little busy with other things recently, I’ve taken up Chocobo Raising in Final Fantasy 11, I’m a leader in a very active SuperGroup in City of Heroes, and I bought Command and Conquer: The First Decade the other day, so i’ve been playing my hands off in Red Alert. Busy stuff.
Anyway, not to neglect my YouTube account, I have another playthrough of a Star Fox Assault stage, the second of the three rail stages (third being the Aparoid Homeworld Core, stage 10). This video is so much better quality than the Fortuna video, in terms of sound, quality, lighting, legibility (you can read everything now), and play ability. It earns a fairly high 3789 points for the run, but it’s about 120 points shy of my personal best, a record I had set in a run just prior to this. I was filming that run, but it turns out my cord caught the cable of my Eyetoy camera, pushing it off alignment without me realizing it.
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This is suicide!
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what is an asteriod belt? can u give me a few facts about them? pleaseee!
thanks!
It is an orbital region between Mars and Jupiter. In it there are thousands of small rocky chunks ranging in size from a few hundred yards across to 578 miles in diameter. There are millions of other rocks down to the size of pebbles The whole solar system was full of this stuff when it was first forming. Most of the debris was swept up by the planets. Jupiter swept up so much from this region that there wasn’t enough left to form a planet. Here’s more information.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/asteroids/