High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt because there are other asteroids in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. Maybe half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea. These have mean diameters of more than 400 km, while Ceres, the asteroid belt`s only identified dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle. The asteroid material is so thinly distributed that multiple unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form an asteroid family whose members have similar orbital characteristics and compositions. Collisions also produce a fine dust that forms a major component of the zodiacal light. Individual asteroids within the asteroid belt are categorized by their spectra, with most falling into three basic groups: carbonaceous (C-type), silicate (S-type), and metal-rich (M-type).