meteoroid

American  

[mee-tee-uh-roid] / ˈmi ti əˌrɔɪd /

noun

Astronomy.

1. any of the small bodies, often remnants of comets, traveling through space: when such a body enters the earth's atmosphere it is heated to luminosity and becomes a meteor.

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meteoroid British  

/ ˈmiːtɪəˌrɔɪd /

noun

1. any of the small celestial bodies that are thought to orbit the sun, possibly as the remains of comets. When they enter the earth's atmosphere, they become visible as meteors

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meteoroid Scientific  

/ mē′tē-ə-roid′ /

1. A small, rocky or metallic body revolving in interplanetary space around the Sun. A meteoroid is significantly smaller than an asteroid, ranging from small grains or particles to the size of large boulders. The clustered meteoroids associated with regular annual meteor showers are believed to be very small particles of cometary debris. Meteoroids that survive their passage through the Earth's atmosphere and land as meteorites are somewhat larger, solitary bodies and are encountered in no predictable pattern.

2. See Note at meteor

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Other Word Forms

• meteoroidal adjective

Etymology

Origin of meteoroid

First recorded in 1860–65; meteor + -oid

Example Sentences

A recently published study reports that shaking from moonquakes, rather than impacts from meteoroids, was the main force behind the shifting terrain in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the site where Apollo 17 astronauts landed in 1972.

From Science Daily

And meteorites are meteoroids that survive their journey through the atmosphere and hits the ground.

From BBC

Unusually, its trajectory was caught on several cameras in the region used to track meteoroids.

From New York Times

A Russian investigation concluded that those leaks likely resulted from hits by tiny meteoroids, not manufacturing flaws.

From Seattle Times

We wandered over to the first area—Space Is Dangerous—and watched a video of a hole being blown through a thick metal plate by a simulated meteoroid.

From Literature