Scientists Map the Seven Stages of a Meteorite's Fiery Fall to Earth

A new study led by meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center has mapped, for the first time, the full seven-stage sequence a space rock goes through as it turns into a meteorite. The research, published August 24, 2026 in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, is based on video and photographic data from 75 documented meteorite falls.

The team — Jenniskens along with Eric Stern (formerly NASA Ames, now Hyperspace Technologies Inc.), Stu Pilorz (SETI Institute), and Darrel Robertson (NASA Ames) — tracked each rock's entry angle, spin rate, and mass loss frame by frame. Their biggest finding overturns a long-held assumption: it isn't evaporation that strips away most of a meteoroid's mass during entry, but melting followed by fragmentation. "We used to think that solid rocks would evaporate from the enormous heat and brilliant light generated in the air collision," Jenniskens said. "We found instead that first melting and then fragmentation controls how a rock loses mass."

The seven stages run from atmospheric entry, through brightening and fireball formation, into a melting phase around 60 km altitude where a rock can lose up to 40% of its mass, then fragmentation at the front and back as the material breaks apart under pressures far below the rock's measured strength, ending when the glow fades and a thin fusion crust sets on whatever survives to the ground. That fusion crust — the dark, glassy skin you can see on a real fall — is the physical signature of the whole process, and it's exactly what shows up on pieces like our Sikhote-Alin specimen and our Campo del Cielo fragments.

Understanding exactly where and how meteoroids melt and break apart also feeds directly into planetary defense work, helping researchers predict how a larger incoming object might behave during a mid-air breakup. See our full range of meteorite specimens, each one a survivor of this same seven-stage fall.

Source: SETI Institute, and Space.com, August 2026. Study: Jenniskens et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science, DOI 10.1111/maps.70203.

Written by Nic Scogna, a photographer and mineral collector based in Lexington, Kentucky, and the founder of Crystal Earth Gallery and Kyanite King Minerals. For over 25 years, he has traveled to mineral localities across the U.S. — from Maine to California — personally sourcing the specimens, gemstones, and photographic subjects featured here. When not out in the field, Nic writes about mineralogy, collecting, and the craft of turning raw stone into wearable art.