Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star or falling star, is the visible passage of a glowing meteoroid, micrometeoroid, comet or asteroid through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, [11] [23] [24] creating a streak of light via its rapid motion and sometimes ...
A "meteorite fall", also called an "observed fall", is a meteorite collected after its arrival was observed by people or automated devices. Any other meteorite is called a "meteorite find". [43] [44] There are more than 1,100 documented falls listed in widely used databases, [45] [46] [47] most of which have specimens in modern collections.
The lower-density Martian atmosphere allows much larger particles than on Earth to survive the passage through to the surface, largely unaltered until impact. While on Earth particles that survive entry typically have undergone significant transformation, a significant fraction of particles entering the Martian atmosphere throughout the 60 to ...
Burning up in the atmosphere may also contribute to atmospheric pollution. [2] Numerous small cylindrical tanks from space objects have been found, designed to hold fuel or gasses. [3] Notable examples of space debris falling to Earth and impacting human life include:
The visible phenomenon due to the passage of an asteroid or meteoroid through the atmosphere is termed a meteor. [21] If the object reaches the ground, then it is termed a meteorite. During the Chelyabinsk meteoroid's traversal, there was a bright object trailing smoke, then an air burst (explosion) that caused a powerful blast wave. The latter ...
Kenya Space Agency (KSA) said the object, a metallic ring roughly 8 feet in diameter and weighing some 1,100 pounds, crashed into Mukuku village, in Makueni county, on December 30 at around 3:00 ...
Objects which enter and then leave Earth's atmosphere, the so-called Earth-grazers, are a distinct phenomenon, inasmuch as entering the lower atmosphere can constitute an impact event rather than a close pass. Earth-grazer can also be short for a body that "grazes" the orbit of the Earth, in a different context.
On 7 October 2008, an approximately 4 meter asteroid labeled 2008 TC 3 was tracked for 20 hours as it approached Earth and as it fell through the atmosphere and impacted in Sudan. This was the first time an object was detected before it reached the atmosphere and hundreds of pieces of the meteorite were recovered from the Nubian Desert. [95]