The asteroid belt is this vast ring of rocks orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, but it’s not exactly bumper-to-bumper traffic out there. Picture the solar system’s laziest game of dodgeball.
We’ve sent multiple space probes through the asteroid belt since the 1970s, like the Pioneer and Voyager missions, and shocker—they didn’t get whacked by space rocks. These probes navigated millions of kilometers without a scratch. Why? Because the average distance between asteroids is more than twice the distance from the Earth to the moon. It’s safer than crossing a busy street in New York.
The probability of a probe hitting an asteroid? The odds are laughably low, less than one in one billion. It’s like worrying about getting struck by lightning while winning the lottery on the way to cash in your winning ticket. In other words, mission control isn’t losing sleep over it.
