Asteroids
Several hundred thousand asteroids have been discovered and given provisional designations so far. Thousands more are discovered each year. Click here to find out more.

Comets
Comets often are described as "dirty snowballs" because they are made of frozen lumps of gas and rock. They have highly elliptical orbits which cause them to spend most of their time frozen in space in the outer solar system or farther. Click here to find out more.

Meteors
A meteor, sometimes called a "shooting star," can be the brightest object in the night sky, yet meteoroids are the smallest bodies in the solar system that can be observed by eye. Click here to find out more.

More on Meteors
Ever look up in the night sky and see a shooting star? That streak of light is called a meteor. It is caused by a rock in space that hits the earth's atmosphere and is heated so much by the air they glow and sometimes burn up completely. Click here to find out more.