Asteroids are the ancient remnants of our solar system’s birth, rocky fragments that never formed into planets. Most of these celestial wanderers inhabit the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where Jupiter’s immense gravitational influence prevents them from assembling into a single world. Ranging from house-sized boulders to Ceres, a dwarf planet nearly 1,000 kilometers across, asteroids preserve pristine records of the early solar system’s composition and conditions.