Asteroids in fiction
After Ceres, Asteroid 433 Eros is perhaps the most-commonly mentioned asteroid, probably because it is one of the largest near-Earth asteroids.
Near-Earth object
In 2000, NASA reduced its estimate of the number of existing near-Earth asteroids over one kilometer in diameter from 1,000–2,000 to 500–1,000. Shortly thereafter, the LINEAR survey provided an alternative estimate of . In 2011, on the basis of NEOWISE observations, the estimated number of one-kilometer NEAs was narrowed to (of which 93% had been discovered at the time), while the number of NEAs larger than 140 meters across was estimated at . The NEOWISE estimate differed from other estimates in assuming a slightly lower average asteroid albedo, which produces larger estimated diameters for the same asteroid brightness. This resulted in 911 then known asteroids at least 1 km across, as opposed to the 830 then listed by CNEOS. In 2017, using an improved statistical method, two studies reduced the estimated number of NEAs brighter than absolute magnitude 17.75 (approximately over one kilometer in diameter) to . The estimated number of asteroids brighter than absolute magnitude of 22.0 (approximately over 140 m across) rose to , double the WISE estimate, of which about a third are known as of 2018.