{"id":243804,"date":"2026-09-09T01:18:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/scientists-discover-the-7-stages-a-meteoroid-goes-through-before-hitting-earth"},"modified":"2026-09-09T01:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:18:22","slug":"scientists-discover-the-7-stages-a-meteoroid-goes-through-before-hitting-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/scientists-discover-the-7-stages-a-meteoroid-goes-through-before-hitting-earth","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover the 7 Stages a Meteoroid Goes Through Before Hitting Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-the-7-stages-a-meteoroid-goes-through-before-hitting-earth2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>An analysis of 75 meteorite falls identified seven distinct processes that occur as space rocks melt, break apart, and slow down before reaching the ground.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A space rock entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere does far more than simply \u201cburn up.\u201d By examining 75 meteorite falls recorded in videos and photographs, researchers identified seven distinct stages that shape the transformation from incoming space rock to meteorite.<\/p>\n<p>Their results show that melting and fragmentation, rather than evaporation alone, determine how these objects shed mass, lose speed, and eventually reach the ground. The findings were published in <em><i>Meteoritics &amp; Planetary Science<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An analysis of 75 meteorite falls identified seven distinct processes that occur as space rocks melt, break apart, and slow down before reaching the ground. A space rock entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere does far more than simply \u201cburn up.\u201d By examining 75 meteorite falls recorded in videos and photographs, researchers identified seven distinct stages that shape [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}