Asteroid

From Slackerpedia Galactica

An Asteroid is a rejected rocky object, jealous of not becoming a planet so sometimes it smashes into a planet out of pure jealousy. An asteroid is not to be confused with a Comet. An asteroid is a part of the classification of Small Solar System Bodies and they mainly orbit in the creatively named Asteroid Belt.

Despite what is seen in movies, asteroid belts are very big places. It would be quite hard to hit an asteroid. In fact, we aim for them! Most space probes heading into the outer solar systems have their orbits refined to pass by an asteroid or two when possible. This allows for extra science to come from the mission and also gives engineers a chance to calibrate instruments.

Because asteroids are smaller than planets, they're not as bright. The first of them, Ceres wasn't discovered until 1801. Now we know the Solar System is crawling with them. A large number of Asteroids were created starting 1979, often hundreds at a time for a mere 25 cents. Nowadays we're mainly interested in the ones that could hit Earth and End Life As We Know It™. There are rather a lot of them around... but hey, sleep well tonight.