Asteroids: The Real-Life Video Game
Jenn Dlugos, Charlie Hatton · 2021
Asteroids tend to be oddly shaped, and many rotate in weird ways, clumsily tumbling as they orbit around the sun. Some asteroids even have small moons. The dog-bone-shaped asteroid Kleopatra has two satellite moons named Alexhelios and Cleoselene. Like stars, asteroids can even form binary relationships with each other, in which the two asteroids orbit around each other like two star-crossed lovers dancing. Most known asteroids are in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Outside of the belt, there are Trojan asteroids, which share an orbit with a planet but do not crash into it. Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune have Trojans, and NASA discovered Earth’s first Trojan asteroid in 2011. When asteroids or meteoroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they are called meteors . Asteroids are often called space rocks, but they can vary quite a bit in composition. The composition tells scientists how close to the sun the asteroids formed.