meteoroid

[ mee-tee-uh-roid ]

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.

meteoroid

/ 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

meteoroid

/ 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

Derived Forms

• ˌmeteorˈoidal, adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of meteoroid¹

First recorded in 1860–65; meteor + -oid

Example Sentences

The comet will look like a bright fireball with a long, extended tail, said Bill Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, KABC-TV reported.

From Los Angeles Times

"Here at Earth, we sometimes see that process in action when in a short time of say 10 seconds we detect ten or twenty meteors in part of the sky, a meteor cluster, the result of a meteoroid having fallen apart by thermal stresses just before entering Earth's atmosphere," says Jenniskens.

From Science Daily

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

The third leak incident follows on the heels of the large rupture in December that disabled a Soyuz crew ferry ship, which was thought to be caused by micrometeoroid impact, which is what it sounds like — an extremely small meteoroid.

From Salon

But on other worlds, it’s more typical to find metamorphic rocks forged in the split-second shock of a meteoroid impact.

From National Geographic