What is a meteorite and what happen when it hits the ground?

Large space rocks that do not burn up in the atmosphere crash on the Earth's surface and are known as meteorites. When a large meteorite hits the ground, it can produce a crater. Meteorite craters are rare on Earth, because the atmosphere slows the meteorite and also usually burns it up. It range in size from a few meters to 140 kilometers across. Most were formed more than 50 million years ago. The 200 km-wide Chicxulub Crater, now under the Gulf of Mexico, was formed when a huge rock impacted with Earth 65 million years ago.

On planets and moons with no atmosphere, huge numbers of meteorites strike with enormous power. Our own Moon is estimated to have 3,000,000 million meteorite craters measuring 1 m or more in diameter. Some of the large geographical features on the Moon and other planets and moons throughout the Solar System are probably the result of strikes by large meteors hitting their surfaces.