Steven R. Chesley - Böcker

Asteroids are the small, usually rocky, bodies that reside primarily in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. Individually, and as a population, they carry the signatures of the evolutionary processes that gave birth to the Solar System and shaped our planetary neighbourhood, as well as informing us about processes on broader scales and deeper cosmic times. The main asteroid belt is a lively place where the physical, rotational and orbital properties of asteroids are governed by a complicated interplay of collisions, planetary resonances, radiation forces, and the formation and fission of secondary bodies. The proceedings of IAU Symposium 318 are organised around the following core themes: origins, collisional evolution, orbital evolution, rotational evolution, and evolutional coupling. Together the contributions highlight the ongoing, exciting challenges for graduate students and researchers in this diverse field of study.