National Science Bee Practice Test 2026 - Free Science Quiz Practice Questions and Study Guide

The key idea is understanding where meteor ablation happens as a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the mesosphere, which lies directly above the stratosphere. In this layer, the air is thin but still present enough to cause rapid heating as the meteor speeds through, turning its surface into plasma and creating a bright streak.

To place it in context, the atmosphere from the surface upward goes through the troposphere (where weather occurs), then the stratosphere (with the ozone layer), then the mesosphere (where meteors burn up), and above that the thermosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is a charged region that overlaps with the upper layers, but it isn’t the discrete layer where meteor burning is defined to occur.