Today is Asteroid Day.
On June 30, 1908, a powerful asteroid hit a place in Russia called Tunguska. It's the largest recorded asteroid impact on Earth. It destroyed 770 square miles of a forest.
According to the NASA Science Space Place website, asteroids are "small" rocky objects that orbit the sun. Some are hundreds of miles in diameter but most are pebbles. Asteroids are left over from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
This article had some cool facts about asteroids.
The first asteroid that was discovered is called 1 Ceres and it was discovered in 1801. It's also the biggest asteroid in the solar system with a diameter of 580 miles.
The chances of an asteroid hitting Earth are small but there are groups that look out for them just in case.
CNN had a cool video showing a project that NASA and the European Space Agency are working on to see if they can change the direction of an asteroid.
This article talks about 10 different asteroids. One of them is called Chicxulub. It's also known as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Scientists believe this asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago and killed most of the plants and animals.
The story of the Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur happens when this asteroid misses Earth instead. In the trailer, you see the asteroid fly past Earth and all the dinosaurs turn their heads to look.
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