<p>From what little I know of this subject, It should be possible for Earth (Or a planet the size of Earth) to keep a system of Planetary Rings. However, looking around the internet only gives me info about the ring systems we know of, but not about the mechanics of actually having one.</p>
<p>Are there limits to how far/close the rings could be? Could their upper limit be as far away as the moon, or would they have coalesced into a satellite at that distance? Could their lower limit be as close as a geosyncronous orbit? Must they be even closer than that?</p>
<p>The reason I'm asking this is because I was wondering if planetary rings would have hurt or helped implementing space infrastructure. On one side, the easy access to rocky asteroids would have helped the development of space mining, and easy access to icy asteroids could help combat climate change (and implement some simple geoengineering). But having them too close would make geosyncronous orbits a huge risk for artificial satellites.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-11T12:09:20.830Z
Icy asteroids tend to sublimate this close to the Sun. Even in the main belt, ice isn't that common, but it is a major component of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line_(astrophysics)
PM 2Ring
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-13T03:25:47.983Z
Have you seen similar posts: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/11733/why-earth-does-not-have-rings .. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/19743/can-earth-have-a-ring
Nilay Ghosh
<earth><orbital-elements><earth-like-planet><planetary-ring>
A couple of questions about Earth's hypothetical planetary rings
Erik Mækir
# A couple of questions about Earth's hypothetical planetary rings

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-10-11)

From what little I know of this subject, It should be possible for Earth (Or a planet the size of Earth) to keep a system of Planetary Rings. However, looking around the internet only gives me info about the ring systems we know of, but not about the mechanics of actually having one.

Are there limits to how far/close the rings could be? Could their upper limit be as far away as the moon, or would they have coalesced into a satellite at that distance? Could their lower limit be as close as a geosyncronous orbit? Must they be even closer than that?

The reason I'm asking this is because I was wondering if planetary rings would have hurt or helped implementing space infrastructure. On one side, the easy access to rocky asteroids would have helped the development of space mining, and easy access to icy asteroids could help combat climate change (and implement some simple geoengineering). But having them too close would make geosyncronous orbits a huge risk for artificial satellites.

**Tags:** earth, orbital-elements, earth-like-planet, planetary-ring

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Icy asteroids tend to sublimate this close to the Sun. Even in the main belt, ice isn't that common, but it is a major component of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line_(astrophysics)  
> **username_2**: Have you seen similar posts: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/11733/why-earth-does-not-have-rings .. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/19743/can-earth-have-a-ring  

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## 0 answers

