But strace shows:
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/XXXXX/.local/share/kstars/asteroids.dat", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
futex(0x7fbb7e3234, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 2147483647) = 0
So indeed, at least the ~/.local/share/kstars/asteroids.dat is missing. Is there a dependency missing? And why ~/.local?
OK, other files are probed in multiple locations and finally found in /usr/share/kstars. And I even found an asteroids.dat there.
Well, "cp /usr/share/kstars/asteroids.dat .local/share/kstars/" also does the trick.