What are small bodies between Mars and Jupiter called?

If you have ever wondered what lies in the vast empty space between Mars and Jupiter, the answer is far more interesting than you might think — millions of rocky, metallic bodies called asteroids are orbiting the Sun in a region known as the Asteroid Belt. These are not random debris floating in space — they are actually the leftover building material from when our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Jupiter's incredibly powerful gravitational pull kept pulling these fragments apart, never allowing them to clump together and form a proper planet — so they just stayed there, orbiting endlessly.

• Asteroid Belt: Located between Mars and Jupiter, containing millions of asteroids ranging from tiny pebbles to objects hundreds of kilometres across
• Largest Asteroid: Ceres, with a diameter of about 940 km, is so large it is now classified as a dwarf planet
• Composition: Made of rock, metal, and carbon-rich material — essentially frozen leftovers from the early solar system
• Comets vs Asteroids: Comets originate from the Oort Cloud and have icy compositions, while asteroids are rocky and confined to the asteroid belt
• Meteors and Meteorites: When asteroids enter Earth's atmosphere they become meteors (shooting stars) — and if they survive and hit Earth's surface, they are called meteorites