Can meteorites be made of glass?
Not usually. Meteorites are mostly rock and metal. But their outer crust is glassy, and some natural glasses on Earth, called tektites, were made by meteorite impacts.
Meteorites are made mostly of rocky minerals and metal. But glass does play a part in their story.
Glassy crust. As a meteorite falls through the air, its outside melts. When the melted layer cools quickly, it forms a thin, glassy skin called the fusion crust. On some meteorites, especially ones from the asteroid Vesta, the crust is very shiny, almost like black glass.
Glass inside. Some meteorites contain tiny amounts of glass inside, between the crystals of their chondrules, or in black veins made when asteroids crashed together and melted bits of rock. You need a microscope to see most of it.
Tektites. On Earth, there are natural glasses called tektites. They formed when giant meteorites crashed into Earth and melted the ground, throwing drops of melted rock into the sky. The drops cooled into glass and fell back down, sometimes far away. Tektites are not meteorites themselves, because they are made of melted Earth rock. One famous kind is moldavite, a green glass from central Europe.
Desert glass. In Egypt, there is a pale yellow natural glass called Libyan Desert Glass, also probably made by a powerful impact or explosion in the sky about 29 million years ago. A piece of it was carved into a scarab for the jewellery of the young Egyptian king Tutankhamun.