Meteors melt and shatter rather than simply burning up, study finds

After studying videos and photos of 75 meteorite falls, researchers identified seven stages that space rocks pass through as they plunge into Earth's atmosphere. Lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames said melting and then fragmentation, not evaporation, control how a rock loses mass. The findings appear in Meteoritics & Planetary Science.