What’s the Difference Between a Meteoroid, a Meteor, and a Meteorite?

It’s a cool night, and you look up at the stars twinkling and serene in the dark sky. Then a light streaks across the sky and is gone. “Wow, a shooting star,” you think. “A meteor. Wait...or is it a meteorite? Or a meteoroid?”

It is a meteor. A meteor is the streak of light that you see in the sky when a small piece of cometary or asteroidal material enters the atmosphere at high speed and burns up because of the frictional heating from the piece’s collision with the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere. Before the small bit of comet or asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, it floats through interplanetary space and is called a meteoroid.

Most meteoroids that enter the atmosphere burn up completely as meteors. In some cases, however, the meteoroid does not completely burn up, and the object actually makes it to Earth’s surface. The chunk that has survived its fiery journey is called a meteorite. A small body starts its life as a meteoroid floating through space between the planets until it makes a bright streak of light in Earth’s atmosphere as a meteor and then, if it isn’t consumed by frictional heating, finally lands on the ground as a meteorite.