☄️ Comets, asteroids and the things that hit us

What you’ll learn

1. The small bodiesDistinguish asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites and explain why small bodies matter.Asteroids and comets are surviving construction material from the early solar system; meteors are atmospheric flashes and meteorites are surviving groundfall.
2. Where they travelMap the asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, near-Earth objects, and Trojan populations.Small bodies occupy distinct reservoirs shaped by temperature, formation history, and gravity.
3. Comets in actionExplain how a comet's nucleus, coma, tails, and missions change with solar heating.Comet activity is a temporary response to sunlight, and missions such as Rosetta made that response measurable.
4. Asteroids as worldsUse spacecraft and sample-return evidence to compare asteroid surfaces, interiors, and histories.Vesta, Bennu, Ryugu, and Psyche show that asteroids range from differentiated rocks to weak rubble piles and metal-rich bodies.
5. When objects hitDescribe atmospheric entry, airbursts, crater formation, and the evidence for major impacts.Impacts transfer energy through air and rock, leaving effects from meteor flashes to buried global-scale structures.
6. Finding and deflectingExplain how surveys calculate risk and how DART tested kinetic deflection.Planetary defense depends on early detection, better orbits, target characterisation, and response methods matched to warning time.
7. What the evidence teachesConnect meteorites, returned samples, crater records, and orbital populations to solar-system history.Small bodies are both archives of ancient chemistry and evidence of the collisions and migrations that shaped planetary environments.

Questions this course answers

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