Asteroids

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Space Age expansion exclusive feature.

Asteroids are floating minerals found in space. There are four types of asteroids in Space Age: metallic, carbonic, oxide and promethium. Promethium asteroids are only encountered when en route to the shattered planet. Asteroids appear from all directions around stationary space platforms. Asteroid collectors can collect asteroid chunks, which can be fed into a crusher, grinding the chunks into useful resources.

While traveling through space, asteroids will appear in front of the space platform at a much higher rate and damage it on contact. Turrets placed towards the north edge of the platform can prevent damage by breaking the asteroids into smaller pieces until only the harmless asteroid chunks remain.

The density of asteroids can be seen by going to Remote view > Surfaces > Space Map and clicking on an interplanetary route between two planets, or by searching "route" in Factoriopedia. The graph will show a white vertical line overlay on the asteroid graph corresponding to the ship's position when underway.

Asteroid types

Name	Description	Health (metallic/carbonic/oxide)	Health (promethium)	Resistances
Asteroid chunk	Harmless. This is the only asteroid type that spawns in orbit over Nauvis. Does not have health and is instantly destroyed on contact with the space platform. Can be collected by asteroid collectors.	N/A	N/A	N/A
Small asteroid	Does not spawn naturally. Produces chunks on destruction. Does small damage on contact with the space platform.	100	200	Electric: 100% Explosion: 50% Fire: 100% Laser: 20%
Medium asteroid	Spawns in space and in orbit of planets other than Nauvis. Splits into small asteroids when destroyed. Does medium damage. Can destroy several tiles of space platform foundation before expiring. Heavily resistant to laser damage.	400	800	Electric: 100% Explosion: 30% Fire: 100% Laser: 90% Physical: 10%
Big asteroid	Spawns in space beyond Fulgora and Gleba. Splits into medium asteroids when destroyed. Practically immune to physical and laser damage. Does large amount of damage. Can go right through the space platform destroying everything in its path. Because of its high flat physical resistance, gun turrets are ineffective against them, and it has even higher laser resistance than its medium counterpart. Rocket turrets are usually more effective.	2000	4000	Electric: 100% Explosion: 10% Fire: 100% Laser: 95% Physical: 2000/10%
Huge asteroid	Spawns in space beyond Aquilo. Splits into big asteroids when destroyed. Will absolutely destroy the space platform if it is not equipped with a turret that can overcome its enormous flat physical resistance, e.g. a railgun turret.	5000	10000	Electric: 100% Explosion: 99% Fire: 100% Laser: 99% Physical: 3000/10%

Asteroid chunks

Asteroid chunks are the smallest asteroid type, serving as the sole source of resources in space. Due to their size and low mass, these small chunks will not damage the player's space platform when colliding with it. These chunks come in four distinct varieties, three of which can be processed into raw materials using crushers. All chunks can be collected with asteroid collectors. Researching advanced asteroid processing unlocks alternate recipes which can extract additional materials.

Asteroid Processing

Asteroids	Processed into	Advanced processing
Metallic asteroid chunk	Iron ore	Copper ore
Carbonic asteroid chunk	Carbon	Sulfur
Oxide asteroid chunk	Ice	Calcite
Promethium asteroid chunk	Cannot be processed; used in crafting promethium science packs.

Gallery

• 
  Metallic asteroids.
• 
  Carbonic asteroids.
• 
  Oxide asteroids.
• 
  Promethium asteroids.

See also

• Space platform
• Asteroid collector