You must have seen a streak of light passing in the night sky a number of times. These so-called ‘shooting stars,” have different names depending on how they reach the Earth. NASA explains that meteorites are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Consider them as “space rocks." Occasionally, these space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere to burn up and they can be seen as fireballs or “shooting stars”, which are known as meteors. However, in case, a meteoroid survives the travel through the atmosphere and hits the ground on Earth then it's called a meteorite, NASA explained.
But do you know, there is a famous Meteorite named Peekskill which hit a car back in 1992. On October 9, 1992, a shining fireball was spotted over Peekskill, New York. Notably and it was due to a meteor, which had broken into pieces over Kentucky and moved over into other states too. A report by The Hindu mentioned that the meteor slowed down in the atmosphere considerably before it hit the car.
The sound of the meteorite, which weighed 12 kg, when it crashed into tha car was huge. A report from the American Museum of Natural History has confirmed that "Seconds after the crash, the stone was found near the car's crumpled trunk, still warm and smelling of sulfur.” It was said to have been travelling at a speed of 164 miles per hour when it hit the front of the red Chevy Malibu car.
The Hindu report further revealed that the owner of the car sold it to Lang's Fossils and Meteorites in Cranford, New Jersey. In fact, some portions of the PeekSkill meteorite are still preserved in different museums.
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