Between Mars and Jupiter lies a region known as the asteroid belt. It contains tens of thousands of asteroids, but if you flew through the belt, you probably wouldn’t see one because they are so far apart. Almost every asteroid stays in this belt, but Trojan asteroids are further out, in the same path around the Sun as Jupiter.

Astronomers believe that asteroids are lumps of metal and rock left over from the early days of the Solar System. The pull of Jupiter’s strong gravity prevents the rocks from smashing together to form a planet. The largest asteroid in the Solar System is ceres, it’s more than 900km across, but most asteroids are the size of mountains.

Throughout the Solar System, millions of small rocks known as meteoroids orbit the Sun. Bigger chunks are usually pieces of asteroids shattered by crashes in the asteroid belt. Our Planet collides with thousands of these meteoroids every day.