Geo Factoid If a typical meteorite the size of a softball landed in your back yard and you ran out and picked it up, you would get frostbitten fingers. Meteorites enter the earth's atmosphere at the very low temperature of inter-planitary space. Passing through the atmosphere their surfaces are heated to 1000 degrees Celsius or more but the time of their firey flight is so brief that heat penetrates only a small fraction of their total mass.