Hubble Telescope Discovers Over 1,000 New Asteroids in Main Belt

A comprehensive survey using archived Hubble images reveals a significant number of previously uncatalogued small asteroids.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has identified 1,701 asteroid trails, 1,031 of which were previously unknown, in a detailed survey of archived images.
The discovery includes about 400 asteroids smaller than 1 kilometer, offering new insights into the composition and history of the asteroid belt.
Citizen scientists and AI algorithms played a crucial role in the identification process, analyzing a dataset spanning 19 years and 37,000 images.
The findings could impact theories of asteroid formation, suggesting many small asteroids are remnants of collisions rather than primordial bodies.
This research marks a significant advancement in using archival data for space research, potentially applicable to other astronomical datasets.