Dawn of the asteroids

We’ve known of the existence of ‘minor planets’ or asteroids in the Solar System since the start of the 19th century, when Ceres, Vesta and some others of the largest ones were first detected. Since then the number known, large and small, has grown to many hundreds of thousands, most of them orbiting the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter (see page 20).

For most of that time,