Is it just dumb luck that our probes (e.g. Juno, Voyager I, Voyager 2) never collide with even the smallest rocks in space? Is space in our solar system so void that the odds of a collision are so low? Does NASA (and other global space programs) have details about natural debris throughout our solar system that they can avoid collisions through navigation?
In: Physics
For a sense of scale here, you can put every planet in the solar system between the Earth and the Moon (sorry Pluto, you don’t count)
Space is extremely large and the objects within it are extremely small by comparison. The asteroid belt isn’t what you see in Star Wars with dense asteroids bouncing off each other, its a couple big hunks of rock that are separated by millions of miles from the next sizable chunk of rock. 30% of the total mass in the asteroid belt is in Ceres, if you steer around the 4 big ones then the odds of hitting anything are super low.
There’s always a chance that a random rock could take out a billion dollar probe just like there’s always a chance you could find a winning powerball ticket on the sidewalk. Its not a very big chance, but it could technically happen.
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