Asteroid family
population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semi-major axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An asteroid family is a more specific term than asteroid group, whose members, while sharing some broad orbital characteristics, may be otherwise unrelated to each other.
Large prominent families contain several hundred recognized asteroids (and many more smaller objects which may be either not-yet-analyzed, or not-yet-discovered). Small, compact families may have only about ten identified members. About 33% to 35% of asteroids in the main belt are family members. There are about 20 to 30 reliably recognized families, with several tens of less certain groupings. Most asteroid families are found in the main asteroid belt, although several family-like groups such as the Pallas family, Hungaria family, and the Phocaea family lie at smaller semi-major axis or larger inclination than the main belt.
One family has been identified associated with the dwarf planet Haumea. Some studies have tried to find evidence of collisional families among the trojan asteroids, but at present the evidence is inconclusive.
“Asteroid family” enters the record as population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Asteroid, family and population can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q249083. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asteroid family” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.