Asteroids

Whee. I float and spin and tumble in the big, dark space. I am a bumpy, lumpy rock. I look like a big space potato. I am not alone. I have lots and lots of rocky friends. We all travel together in a big, long line. We go around and around the big, warm Sun. We zoom past the bright red planet, Mars. It is so pretty. Do you know who we are. We are Asteroids.

For a very, very long time, people on Earth could not see me. I am so far away. I look like a teeny, tiny dot. But people are very clever. They made special looking glasses to see things that are far, far away. They are called telescopes. One night, a long, long time ago, on January 1st, 1801, a man named Giuseppe Piazzi looked through his big telescope. He saw my biggest friend, Ceres. She was just a tiny dot of light. At first, he thought she was a star, twinkling in the sky. But then he saw her move. Twinkly stars do not move like that. He was so excited. He had found the very first asteroid. He had found my friend.

We are very important. We are like leftover building blocks. When the Sun and Earth and all the other planets were just tiny babies, we were the pieces left over. We hold secrets from a long, long time ago. Scientists on Earth are very curious about our secrets. They send friendly robot spaceships to visit me and my friends. The robots take pictures and say hello. They learn so much from us. Maybe one day, you’ll look up at the big night sky and wave hello to me.