Minor planet designation in the context of Apollo asteroid

A Mars-crossing asteroid (MCA, also Mars-crosser, MC) is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. Some Mars-crossers numbered below 100000 are listed here. They include the two numbered Mars trojans 5261 Eureka and (101429) 1998 VF31.

Many databases, for instance the JPL Small-Body Database (JPL SBDB), only list asteroids with a perihelion greater than 1.3 AU as Mars-crossers. An asteroid with a perihelion less than this is classed as a near-Earth object even though it is crossing the orbit of Mars as well as crossing (or coming near to) that of Earth. Nevertheless, these objects are listed on this page. A grazer is an object with a perihelion below the aphelion of Mars (1.67 AU) but above the Martian perihelion (1.38 AU). The JPL SBDB lists 13,500 Mars-crossing asteroids. Only 18 MCAs are brighter than absolute magnitude (H) 12.5, which typically makes these asteroids with H<12.5 more than 13 km in diameter depending on the albedo. The smallest known MCAs have an absolute magnitude (H) of around 24 and are typically less than 100 meters in diameter. There are over 21,600 known Mars-crossers of which only 5751 have received a MPC number.

Detached objects are a dynamical class of minor planets in the outer reaches of the Solar System and belong to the broader family of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). These objects have orbits whose points of closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) are sufficiently distant from the gravitational influence of Neptune that they are only moderately affected by Neptune and the other known planets: This makes them appear to be "detached" from the rest of the Solar System, except for their attraction to the Sun.

In this way, detached objects differ substantially from most other known TNOs, which form a loosely defined set of populations that have been perturbed to varying degrees onto their current orbit by gravitational encounters with the giant planets, predominantly Neptune. Detached objects have larger perihelia than these other TNO populations, including the objects in orbital resonance with Neptune, such as Pluto, the classical Kuiper belt objects in non-resonant orbits such as Makemake, and the scattered disk objects like Eris.

This is a list of unnumbered trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) first observed since 1993 and grouped by the year of principal provisional designation. The data is sourced from the Minor Planet Center's (MPC) List of Trans Neptunian Objects, List Of Centaurs and Scattered-Disk Objects, List Of Other Unusual Objects, and Database Search. These objects will eventually be numbered as secured discoveries with an official discoverer determined by the MPC. Until then, additional observations are needed to sufficiently decrease an object's orbital uncertainty. As of November 2025, there are 4,518 unnumbered objects, defined here as minor planets with a semi-major axis larger than 30.1 AU (Neptune's average orbital distance from the Sun).

The list also contains information from "Johnston's Archive", such as an object's diameter, its dynamical class and binary status with the satellite's diameter, as well as its albedo, spectral taxonomy and B–R color index. Members of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ESDOs, EDDOs and sednoids) – with a semi-major axis greater than 150 AU and perihelion greater than 30 AU – are also identified.

This is a list of minor planets which have been officially named by the Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The list consists of partial pages, each covering a number range of 1,000 bodies citing the source after each minor planet was named for. An overview of all existing partial pages is given in section § Index.

Among the hundreds of thousands of numbered minor planets only a small fraction have received a name so far. As of 10 June 2024, there are 24,795 named minor planets out of a total of more than 600,000 numbered ones (also see List of minor planets § Main index as numbers increase constantly). Most of these bodies are named for people, in particular astronomers, as well as figures from mythology and fiction. Many minor planets are also named after places such cities, towns, and villages, mountains and volcanoes; after rivers, observatories, as well as organizations, clubs and astronomical societies. Some are named after animals and plants. A few minor planets are named after exotic entities such as supercomputers or have an unknown origin.