A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic object traveling through space, ranging from tiny dust grains smaller than a millimeter to boulder-sized chunks up to one meter across. These cosmic wanderers are essentially space debris—fragments chipped off from asteroids during collisions or particles shed by comets as they journey around the Sun.</p><p>Most meteoroids originate from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where rocky bodies occasionally crash into each other, scattering fragments throughout the solar system. Others come from comets, which leave trails of debris as their icy surfaces vaporize near the Sun. For example, particles from Comet Swift-Tuttle create the spectacular Perseid meteor shower each August.</p><p>When a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere at speeds of 11-72 kilometers per second, friction causes it to glow brightly, creating what we call a "shooting star" or meteor. Most burn up completely, but larger ones that survive the fiery journey and reach the ground become meteorites—providing scientists with pristine samples of our solar system's early materials.</p><p>NASA estimates that Earth encounters about 25 million meteoroids daily, though most are microscopic. The distinction between meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites simply describes the same object at different stages: in space, burning through our atmosphere, and on the ground, respectively.