What are asteroids?
Asteroids are tiny heavenly bodies that move around the Sun. Most of them occur in the region between Mars and Jupiter. They are thought to be fragments left over from the formation of the solar system.
What is trajectory?
Trajectory is a general term for the path of any object moving in a force field such as a gravitational field that exerts a force on the object. Hence, the term trajectory can be applied to the path of space probe moving in a gravitational field.
What is an orbit?
When a small heavenly body moves around a larger one, the smaller body is said to orbit the larger one and the path followed by the smaller body is called its orbit around body. For example, the Earth orbits the Sun.
What are comets?
Comets are small heavenly bodies which orbit the Sun but regularly come close to the Sun. They are partially vaporized by the Sun’s heat and glow brightly for a short time when near the Sun. A comet consists of a central nucleus a few kilometers across and can be mixed with dust.
What are meteorides?
Meteoroids are tiny particles of matter floating in space.
What are meteors?
Sometimes meteoroids fall on Earth but burn to the heat of friction when falling through the Earth’s atmosphere. They are then known as meteors or shooting stars. Meteors are visible in the night sky as short lived bright streaks.
How many meteors fall through the Earth’s atmosphere every day?
About 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) meteors fall upon the Earth every day. Of these, about 5,00,000 are large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Most of these get burnt in the atmosphere completely before they hit the surface of the Earth.
Where does the material in meteors come from?
The material in meteors comes from the miscellaneous bits of matter (called space debris) floating in spaced.
What causes meteor showers?
If the space debris (the origin of the meteors) has originated from a disintegrated comet, the debris tends to form a “Cloud” resulting in a greater frequency of meteors (a meteor shower) when the Earth passes through these “Clouds”.
Name the year when meteors rained profusely in recent times?
In 1966, there was a fantastic meteor shower with a maximum of two thousand meteors a minute. The peak activity was, however, visible only in the north Pacific region.
What are meteorites?
Meteors usually completely burn up before reaching the Earth’s surface. In some cases, where the meteor is large, the burning is incomplete and a residual piece called a meteorite falls on the Earth.
Approximately how many meteorites fall on the Earth?
Small -one every month
50 tonne meteorites -one every 30 years.
250 tonne meteorites -one every 150 years.
50,000 tonne meteorites -one every 100,00 years.
