This NASA center for climate research and Earth observation manages several missions, like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
"To me it made no sense to pull one of even a few objects out of the swarm and call them something other than part of the swarm." -Mike Brown, A.K.A. PlutoKiller
In our Solar System, the four rocky planets dominate the inner portion, while the four gas giants dominate the outer Solar System. But out beyond Neptune, thousands of icy, rocky worlds including Pluto, the former ninth planet make up a vast, wide ring known as the Kuiper Belt.
Planetary scientist Richard Binzel has spent 33 influential years at MIT. His career highlights include contributions to NASA missions OSIRIS-REx, New Horizons, Lucy, and Psyche, as well as research related to asteroids Bennu, Apophis and Vesta.
The 0.75-mile-wide Trojan asteroid is only the second to be discovered in Earth s path around the sun—and is more than three times the size of the first one identified.