Life

Hermes asteroid does not have any liquid water on it and no magnetic field. I don't think that there will be life there any time soon because there is no water. There is not an oxygen atmosphere. As we all know, no person can live without some type of liquid water.

Mars is another planet in the Solar System. It is 54.6 million km. away from Earth. The chance is very small, even less than 1% is that there is life on Mars. In the future there is a possibility (10,000 years from now) there might be life on Mars. From past missons and discoveries scientists have found out that there are microrganisms on the planet. I definitely agree with everything that has been said because Mars is mostly made up of rocks and dust (very desert like) therefore we could not survive today --unless in the future if we find water then there might be life.

Distance

Space is measured in Light years (Ly). Light years is the distance the light can travel in one year. Other then Light years you can measure in kilometers (km) or Astronomers Unit (AU). AU is the distance between the Sun and Earth. 1 AU=150 million kilometers. We use Light years to measure how far away a galaxy or star is from the sun. Also we use kilometers to measure the diameter of planets.

The last spot Hermes Asteroid was seen was 19 million miles away from Earth. It would take a very long time to get to Hermes Asteroid. I don't think that humans will get there mostly because there is no type of liquid on it. Therefor people can not survive without water or a magnetic field. People could observe it from a distance but not actually land there.

Asteroid Formation

After the big bag occurred billions of years ago asteroids were the leftover material left in the universe. It all started with the supernova. They orbit the sun just like the eight planets do. Some asteroids could be as large as 700 km. or as small as 1 km. Unlike the planets, asteroids move in an Asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. There is a very little chance that an asteroid would hit earth because it is too small to make through earths atmosphere. Asteroids are very rocky and icy bodies so they could be dangerous.

Planet?

Over the last few decades scientists have studied and researched the Solar System.

Suddenly they found out that Pluto is not considered a planet anymore and I will tell you why

in the following reasons. To determine if a body in the universe is a planet they have to pass through three rules. The first one is that it needs to be in orbit around the sun. The second is that it needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape. And the third is that it needs to have "cleared the neighborhood" of its orbit. Pluto has the first two rules but on the third one it does not. Eris, is another reason why Pluto is not a planet.

My body, Hermes asteroid is not considered a planet because it does not pass any of the rules. It does not orbit the sun, it does not have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape, and it can't clear the neighborhood of its orbit.

Hermes Asteroid's Size

The diameter of Hermes asteroid is 0.9 km. The sun is 1,391,000 km which is 1545555.55 times bigger then Hermes asteroid. This means that over one million Hermes asteroids fit inside the sun.

The Sun is definitely bigger then all of the other planets and compared to them Hermes Asteroid is extremely small!

My class visited the American Museum of Natural History to learn more about the Solar System. The first place we went was the Hall of Meteorites. When we walked in there was a huge meteorite in the middle called the Ahnighito. It was found in West Greenland and weighs 34 tons! A meteorite is a piece of a meteor. Whenever a meteor hits a planet like earth it starts breaking up into smaller pieces which are called meteorites. Have you ever wondered what a shooting star really is? Well, a shooting star is just another name for meteoroid that burns up as it passes through earths atmosphere.

The next place we visited was called the Rose Center. We saw the Big Bang Movie where I learned that the universe was a lot hotter, smaller, and denser than it is today. Just after leaving the movie theater, right outside there was the Cosmic Pathway. This showed us how the earth evolved since the Big Bang which happened over 13 billion years ago. Then we went to our second movie, Journey To The Stars. The movie was about the history of the solar system. I learned that the sun is just a huge star that uses fusion so shine bright light over the universe.

After visiting this museum I still have some questions. What do asteroids specifically do? How fast do they move and how large are they?

Hermes Asteroid was discovered by Karl Reinmuth in 1937. One day he noticed an odd streak in of light in a picture he had taken of the night sky. It was very close to Earth and moving extremly fast. Reinmuth named it Hermes, the herald of Olympian gods. On October 30, 1937, Hermes glided past Earth only twice as far away as the moon. The asteroid was racing across the sky at a rate of 5 degrees per hour.

Source: NASA

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/31oct_hermes.htm