Whats the difference between meteoroids, meteors and meteorites?
A meteoroid is a relatively small (sand to boulder-sized) fragment of debris in the Solar System. When entering a planet’s atmosphere, the meteoroid is heated up by ram pressure and partially or completely vaporizes. The gas along the path of the meteoroid becomes ionized and glows. The trail of glowing vapor is called a meteor, or a shooting star. If any portion of the meteoroid survives to reach the ground, it is then referred to as a meteorite. http://en.wikipedia.
Meteoroids are small rocks in space, smaller than asteroids – though nobody has defined specifically at what size a rock is an asteroid and when it’s a meteoroid. Suffice it to say that asteroids are huge, meteoroids can be anything from the size of a speck of dust or sugarcube to a 50m diameter rock that hit Tunguska. A meteoroid is the rock in space. A meteor is what the rock becomes when it hits the atmosphere – a glowing, streaking mass that usually disintegrates. A meteorite is what remains of it, should it survive the journey and hit Earth.
