INSIDE THE ASTEROID BELT
Any ideas this sprawling ring of debris orbiting the Sun had of forming a planet were wiped out by the Solar System’s largest inhabitant
WORDS ALAN DEXTER
If the asteroid belt is indeed a planet that didn’t get the chance to form properly, you could be mistaken for thinking that it wouldn’t have made much of a planet in the first place. The asteroid belt stretches from just past Mars beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and although it consists of millions of asteroids, many of those are tiny, dust-like particles. The belt’s overall mass is just four per cent that of our Moon. Almost half that mass is contained in just four asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea. With a diameter of 591 miles, Ceres – officially classified as a dwarf planet – is by far the belt’s largest object. This means that the belt is a much emptier area than we’re generally led to believe, so much so that spacecraft can navigate safely through it without incident. But it wasn’t always this way.