What is a meteorite?
A meteorite is a piece of rock or metal from space that has landed on Earth. This lesson gives you the three words every space-rock scientist uses.
- Explain the difference between a meteoroid, a meteor and a meteorite.
- Say where most meteorites come from.
- Explain why scientists find meteorites so useful.
Links to: Year 5 science, Earth and space; working scientifically: using scientific words correctly.
One rock, three names
Space is not empty. As well as the Sun and the planets, it holds millions of smaller lumps of rock and metal. A small lump travelling through space is called a meteoroid.
Sometimes a meteoroid crosses Earth's path and rushes into the air. It moves so fast that the air around it glows. That streak of light in the sky is called a meteor. Many people call it a shooting star, but it has nothing to do with stars.
If part of the rock survives and lands on the ground, that piece is called a meteorite. So the same rock is a meteoroid in space, a meteor in the sky and a meteorite on the ground.
Where they come from
Most meteorites are broken pieces of asteroids. Asteroids are rocky or metal objects that travel around the Sun, and most of them are in a ring between Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. When asteroids crash into each other, chips fly off. Over millions of years some of those chips end up on a path that meets Earth.
A very small number of meteorites have come from the Moon or from the planet Mars. They were knocked off by huge impacts and travelled through space before landing here.
Why scientists love them
Most meteorites are about 4,500 million years old. That is older than any rock you can find on Earth's surface, because Earth keeps recycling its own rocks through volcanoes, mountains and erosion.
Many asteroids have hardly changed since the planets formed, so their pieces show what the Solar System was made of at the very start. A meteorite is a free sample of another world, delivered to our doorstep.
Make three cards that say meteoroid, meteor and meteorite. On the back of each, draw where the rock is: out in space, glowing in the sky, or resting on the ground. Shuffle them and ask someone at home to put them in the right order, then explain why.
Quiz
5 questions. Choose an answer to see whether you are right and why. Finish the quiz to complete the lesson.
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Question 1What do we call a space rock that has landed on the ground?
Only the piece that reaches the ground is a meteorite. In space it was a meteoroid, and its streak of light in the sky was a meteor.
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Question 2What is a meteor?
A meteor is the glowing streak in the sky. It is often called a shooting star, but it is not a star at all.
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Question 3Where do most meteorites come from?
Most meteorites are chips knocked off asteroids when they collide. Only a few come from the Moon or Mars.
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Question 4Where is the asteroid belt?
Most asteroids travel around the Sun in a ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
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Question 5Why are meteorites useful to scientists?
Most meteorites are about 4,500 million years old, so they keep a record of how the Sun and planets began.