Every dot is a real rock that traveled through space and survived impact with Earth. Explore 150 representative meteorites by mass, year, type, and location. The dataset is NASA's Meteorite Landings archive, and it is full of surprises: the largest intact meteorite weighs as much as a truck, Antarctica is a meteorite goldmine because ice preserves them, and a few have hit cars, houses, and at least one person.
The data comes from the NASA Meteorite Landings dataset, which compiles records from the Meteoritical Society. I chose it because it turns abstract astronomy into tangible objects with dramatic stories: some meteorites are older than Earth, some contain water or organic molecules, and their distribution on the map reveals how human discovery works — deserts and ice sheets preserve them, while dense forests and oceans hide them. The mass range spans a millionfold, which makes any static chart misleading; this explorer uses log-scaled dots and filters to let you feel that range.
This page contains a representative sample of 150 real meteorites. It is built with vanilla JavaScript and inline SVG, with no external libraries or network requests.