Asteroid A-Plenty

This week, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid Vesta. This will be our best look yet at an asteroid, and what the probe digs up could help scientists answer several questions about this and the hundreds of thousands of asteroids that populate the solar system. Most asteroids, including Vesta, reside in the doughnut-like ring of the main asteroid belt that peppers the space between Mars and Jupiter. Other asteroids whirl in tight circles closer to the sun than the Earth, while a large number of them share planets' orbits. Not all asteroids are so happy to stay put, though: Some asteroids' orbits take them on planet-crossing swings through the inner solar system. Given this variety of asteroids, some notably strange ones have popped up over our two centuries-plus of observations since the first asteroid, Ceres, was spotted in 1801. In honor of Dawn's historic mission, which arrives at Vesta in the early morning hours of Saturday (July 17 EDT), here are seven of the solar system's strangest asteroids. (Note that space rocks out beyond the orbit of Jupiter, although somewhat asteroidal in nature, are classified as different bodies, and so we'll leave those alone for now.)