Ask Me Everything6

Through Earth’s atmosphere

cjk Rocky meteorites 'w often fragment as they come through the atmosphere and form a meteorite shower.

§Space rocks weighing less than 220 lb (100 kg) before entering Earth’s atmosphere have no chance of getting to the ground.

//;!*. A rock heavier w than 1,000 tons will punch through Earth’s atmosphere like a bullet through tissue paper.

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The number of meteorites found that originated on Mars

1911

On June 28 of this year, a rock from Mars broke up in Earth’s atmosphere and landed near Alexandria, Egypt

7,000 +

The number of meteorites have been found in searches in Antarctica

38,272

The number of named meteorites at the start of 2010

68,780

The pieces of meteorite that fell near Pułtusk, Poland, in a shower in January 1868

Tell me morę: Hoba West

■    The biggest meteorite found on record is the 60-ton Hoba West.

■    This iron meteorite was discovered in Namibia, Southern Africa, in 1920.

■    Hoba West weighed 66 tons when it was found, but sińce then 6 tons has rusted away.

■    The meteorite is still situated where it landed—the Namibian government declared it a national monument in 1955.

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Return to your base where the rock's composition can be analyzed and the rock verified as a meteorite.

Rock seekers

Camera systems over the U.S.A., Eastern Europę, and the Nullarbor Plain in Australia scan the skies for fireballs of incoming meteorites.

Scientists search the barren, icy wastes of the Antarctic for meteorites—this is where the Martian example pictured below was found. The blue ice glacier region of Allan Hills in the eastern Antarctic has yielded thousands of meteorites.

Searches are also carried out in desert regions such as the Sahara, in North Africa. There, rocks are rare and stand out in the sandy terrain.