News Planetary Science

Earth sweeps up 5,200 tons of extraterrestrial dust each year

Those micrometeorites come from both comets and asteroids

5 micrometeorites found in Antarctica

Five micrometeorites (pictured) found during excavations in Antarctica are just a smidge of the roughly 5,200 metric tons of space dust that fall to Earth each year.

Left two and right: J. Duprat and C. Engrand/CNRS; Middle two: C. Engrand and L. Delauche/CNRS

By Sid Perkins

- More than 2 years ago

As our planet orbits the sun, it swoops through clouds of extraterrestrial dust — and several thousand metric tons of that material actually reaches Earth’s surface every year, new research suggests.