What are Asteroids?
The gap between Mars and Jupiter is occupied by a group of celestial bodies called Asteroids. These objects are rocky in appearance. They are smaller than the planets. Their size ranges from 530 km in diameter to less than 10 m in diameter.
Asteroids are dangerous as they have collided with the earth before and may do so in the future.
What are Comets?
Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock and ices.
They revolve around the high elliptical path of the sun. However, their period of revolution takes a pretty long time to be completed. When they orbit near the sun, they appear like a huge bright head with two tails, one is called a dust tail and the other an ion tail.
Comets are known to appear periodically. One such comet is Halley’s comet, which appears after
nearly every 76 years. It was last seen in 1986.
What are Meteors and Meteorites?
Rock-like space objects enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up. These fireballs or shooting stars are called Meteors.
Due to their high speed, friction is caused by the atmosphere of the Earth, which heats the meteor up. This results in it glowing first and then evaporating at a really fast rate.
Since meteors evaporate quickly, they never make it to the earth’s surface. But there are some
meteors that land on the earth. These types of large meteors are called Meteorites.
What are Artificial satellites?
Artificial satellites are completely man-made satellites that are sent from earth into space. They revolve around the earth more closely than the moon, which is the natural satellite of the earth.
 Examples of such artificial satellites are the Hubble Space Telescope and Sputnik-1.
Summary
| Asteroids | A group of celestial bodies occupying the gap between Mars and Jupiter |
| Comets | Frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock and ices |
| Meteors | Rock-like space objects that enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and
burn up |
| Meteorites | Meteors that land on the earth’s surface |
| Artificial Satellites | Completely man-made satellites that are sent from earth into space |
Did you know?
Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons of meteoritic material falls on the earth each day.
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