Episode 55: The Asteroid Belt

[Fraser]

In the last few weeks we've had many emails saying that our tour of the solar system would not be complete without a show on the asteroid belt. Your wish is our command! We talked about Mars in <a href="http://www.astronomycast.com/solar-system/episode-52-mars/">episode 52</a>, and now that we're back on track our next stop is the asteroid belt.

<strong><a href="http://media.libsyn.com/media/astronomycast/AstroCast-070924.mp3">Episode 55: The Asteroid Belt (13.9MB)</a></strong><br />&nbsp;<br />

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[Sticks]

I wish the BBC Graphics department had listened to the podcast before doing the animation about the Dawn mission.

If you go to this news link, and then watch the animation you get to see an asteroid field aka Empire Strikes back, but not the the asteroid belts.

On a side point, I once heard that there were asteroids in an orbit which crosses that of the Earth, what is the gen on those?

One of the staples of Sci-fi, and I have used this in the past is the concept of asteroid mining. It was suggested that the asteroids to mine would be those that were Earth Orbit crossing ones.

[Lord Jubjub]

Near-Earth asteroids are usually asteroid belt residents that were kicked out of the Belt by Jupiter.

[mr_andrew_d_rowe@hotmail.]

I found it hard to believe that the asteroid belt only makes up 4% of the moon. How about all of the known itty bitty rocky bits together?

[Lord Jubjub]

According to wikipedia, the biggest four asteroids account for almost half of the mass in the belt.

[hawkdoc]

Formation of asteroid belt? I understand from the podcast that the massive influence of Jupiter disrupted the asteroid belt during its formation and prevented its accretion into a planet, but why was its formation so far behind that of Jupiter such that Jupiter was allready so huge as to prevent the asteroids forming a larger body

[clint]

...One of the staples of Sci-fi, and I have used this in the past is the concept of asteroid mining. It was suggested that the asteroids to mine would be those that were Earth Orbit crossing ones.

The cool thing about mining those Earth-crossing ones,
would be that you could hitch a ride on them quite close to Earth, right?

And you get to pass by Earth again every once in a while to deliver the stuff you mined and replenish spare parts and supplies.

[clint]

You didn't mention the recent story about the new
hypothesis about the dinosaur killer originating in a giant crash in the asteroid belt,
which might have showered the inner planets with bits and pieces.

According to that story, one of the pieces might have hit Earth 100 million years later (65 million years ago), and caused the famous major extinction.

[Noclevername]

Some of the Near Earth asteroids can be reached from Earth with less delta-V than a trip to the Moon.