However, in 1911, a 40-kilogram boulder from Mars struck and killed a dog in Egypt, and in Uganda a boy was hit, but not seriously injured, by a small meteorite in 1992. There are no confirmed reports of a human death being caused by rocks from space. Has anyone ever been killed by a meteoroid impact? The most damaging meteorite strike in recent times was the Tunguska event, a megaton-scale explosion that destroyed a swathe of Siberian forest in 1908. Large asteroids are expected to hit Earth once every 2000 years. Larger impacts are rarer: NASA says that an object the size of a car should hit Earth every year. Tiny rocks enter Earth’s atmosphere nearly every day, but burn up unnoticed. There have been no confirmed meteorites originating in this way from Mercury or Venus, because they would have to fight against the Sun’s gravitational pull to reach us. Larger asteroids hitting the moon or Mars can also send shrapnel our way. This can build up over millions of years to give asteroids significant speed. Collisions within the belt can send objects hurtling towards Earth, and heat from the sun can dislodge smaller rocks by warming them more on one side, resulting in a gradual push called the Yarkovsky effect. They range in size from nearly 1000 kilometres across, to microscopic dust particles. Most are from the asteroid belt, a jumble of rocks between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Anything that survives the impact is a meteorite. When an asteroid or meteoroid enters the atmosphere and streaks through the sky, it then becomes known as a meteor. Small asteroids are also called meteoroids. Roughly speaking, an asteroid is a relatively small body (that isn’t a comet), usually rocky or metallic, composed of dirt and ice.
![where would you find a meteoroid where would you find a meteoroid](https://geoscience.unlv.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/meteorite-right-or-wrong.png)
What is the difference between a meteor, a meteorite, a meteoroid and an asteroid? Most meteorites are bits of asteroid, which are themselves leftovers from the formation of the solar system.