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How does a meteoroid become a meteor?

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Illustration showing a massive asteroid above a city map with a dinosaur silhouette for scale, highlighting the asteroid's size compared to major urban areas. — Asteroid This rock would take out more than just a *T. rex*.

A meteoroid becomes a meteor when it enters Earth’s atmosphere at a very high velocity, typically exceeding 11 km per second.12

As the meteoroid travels through the atmosphere, it undergoes energetic collisions with atmospheric atoms and molecules. This process creates intense frictional heating, which causes the object's surface to melt and vaporize while simultaneously heating the surrounding air. This interaction produces a luminous, glowing streak in the sky, which is the phenomenon recognized as a meteor.132

In essence, the term meteoroid refers to the small, stony or metallic object while it is still floating in interplanetary space. Once it enters the atmosphere and begins to burn up, the resulting streak of light is called a meteor. If any portion of the object survives this fiery passage and reaches the ground, it is then classified as a meteorite.13