As Earth circles the Sun, our planet regularly passes through dust and debris left in our path by passing comets and asteroids. Each time this happens, Earth experiences a
meteor shower that fills the sky with bright streaks of light. These “falling stars” are the result of cosmic clouds of detritus burning up in our atmosphere. But does any debris from a meteor shower ever make it to the ground as a meteorite?
The answer is
no. Meteor showers, despite their stunning light shows, don’t actually produce any meteorites.
Meteor vs. meteorite
Space rocks are called different things depending on their environment. When a piece of dust or rocky debris is floating out in space, it’s called a
meteoroid.
A
meteor, on the other hand, is the brief streak of light you see in the sky as a space rock slams into our atmosphere, generating friction that creates heat and light.
Finally, a
meteorite is any part of a space rock that survives its dramatic fall to the ground.
Most meteors occur high in
Earth’s atmosphere, at altitudes between about 50 and 75 miles (80 and 120 kilometers). This layer of the atmosphere is called the mesosphere. (For spaceflight purposes, the Kármán line defines where our atmosphere ends and space begins. It’s located 62 miles [100 km] above sea level. However, the upper layers of our atmosphere actually stretch hundreds of miles above the ground.)
The faster a meteor streaks into the atmosphere, the sooner it will generate enough friction to light up. So, meteor showers made of faster-moving particles (those orbiting in a direction opposite Earth’s direction of motion around the Sun) appear higher in the sky than slower-moving ones.
But even when Earth isn’t flying through a giant cloud of debris and experiencing a meteor shower, the inner solar system is still peppered with random space dust and rocks. That means meteors can happen anytime. On any given night, the so-called sporadic background rate of meteors is about two to seven per hour. During meteor showers, that rate can jump, sometimes tenfold or more.