What Are Asteroids And Where Do They Come From?

Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the sun, just like the rest of the planets and celestial bodies in our solar system. Although asteroids are present throughout the solar system, most of them live in the asteroid belt—a region located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The size of objects within the asteroid belt have a wide range, from being no bigger than a dust particle to almost a thousand kilometers wide. Our solar system came into existence about 4.6 billion years ago when a large cloud of gas and dust collapsed.

Following this event, most of that material fell to the center of the cloud and resulted in the formation of the sun—the central star of our solar system. Planets were formed from some of the condensing dust in that cloud, but not all celestial material had the chance to be incorporated into planets. The leftovers from that time took the form of asteroids.