Which planet is first beyond the asteroid belt?

Which planet is first beyond the asteroid belt? Jupiter is the first planet beyond the main asteroid belt.

The main asteroid belt occupies the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, so Jupiter is the next planet outward from the belt. It is also the fifth planet from the Sun. The belt is not a solid wall or a tightly packed field of rocks; its objects are spread across a vast region, with large gaps between most asteroids.

Jupiter’s enormous gravity strongly shaped the belt’s history. Its gravitational influence helped prevent the material there from assembling into another planet and creates gaps and orbital resonances among asteroids. Jupiter also has Trojan asteroids clustered near the stable Lagrange points ahead of and behind it in its orbit.

A common mistake is to call Mars the first planet beyond the asteroid belt. Mars lies inside the main belt, between Earth and the belt’s inner edge. Jupiter is a gas giant composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, and its mass is greater than that of all the other planets combined.