ASTEROIDS

by Ted Peterson
Asteroids are planets like items that rotate around the sun. They rotate between the planets Mars and Jupiter. They travel along with earth in the same orbits.
Some people think that asteroids was a planet that came apart. There are over 20,000 asteroids up there and if you put them all together you will have the mass of another large planet.
There are 1,220 asteroids over 16 miles across. the largest one is Ceres and it is over 600 miles in diameter. The smallest one that has a name is called 1991 BA and it is only 20 feet across. Of the 1,220 only about 1,000 have been named and have had studies made of them.
One of our space probes took a close up picture of Gaspra. It measured 12 x 7 1/2 X 7 miles.
These astoroids follow orbits with the 3 planets that they are by. Some of them follow Jupiter, some Earth, and some Mars.
Most people think that a astorold hit earth 63,000,000 years ago and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The crater that it made in Mexico is 190 miles wide. Another exploded 6 miles up over Siberia in 1908 and flattened forests and burned up the forests for 50 miles. And it did not hit but exploded up in the sky. What would of happened if it had hit the ground. Someday one of them may hit.
Some astoroids hit Earth each day. We call them meteorites. Astoroids hit each other all the time and break up into some smaller parts. This makes new ones. These willl some time get too close to earth and burn up in our air. A few have hit the ground.
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