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A meteorOID is a space rock floating around in space. It actually isn't "floating" - it's falling around the Sun in orbit, under the influence of gravity.

When the meteorOID comes too close to the Earth, it falls into the Earth's gravity well and hits our atmosphere. The meteoroid heats up with friction, and the compressive heating of running into the wall of air, and begins to glow; it becomes a METEOR, which is the bright streak of light itself.

If the space rock survives its fall through the atmosphere and strikes the Earth, the rock - or more likely, the fragments of the rock - that are sitting on the ground are called meteorITES.

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10y ago

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