Between which two planets does the asteroid belt lie?

Between which two planets does the asteroid belt lie? It lies between Mars and Jupiter. More precisely, the main asteroid belt occupies a broad region of solar orbit space between the paths of those two planets, roughly 2 to 4 astronomical units from the Sun.

The gap puzzled astronomers for centuries. Johannes Kepler wrote in 1596 that a planet might exist between Mars and Jupiter, and the later Titius–Bode pattern also suggested a missing world. Instead, astronomers discovered many smaller bodies, beginning with Ceres in 1801. Ceres is now classified as a dwarf planet, while most other belt objects remain asteroids.

The belt is not a solid traffic jam of rocks. Its objects are separated by enormous distances, and spacecraft regularly cross it safely. Jupiter’s powerful gravity helped prevent the material from combining into a planet and created gaps in the belt’s distribution, known as Kirkwood gaps. The four largest objects—Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea—contain most of the belt’s mass.