juliensimon/meteorite-landings

---
license: cc-by-4.0
pretty_name: "Meteorite Landings"
language:
- en
description: "NASA's comprehensive database of all known meteorite landings on Earth, with classification, mass, coordinates, and discovery context."
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
- tabular-regression
tags:
- space
- meteorites
- planetary-science
- nasa
- open-data
- tabular-data
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
configs:
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: data/meteorite_landings.parquet
default: true
---

# Meteorite Landings

*Part of the [Planetary Science Datasets](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/planetary-science-datasets-69c2d4683bd6a66c34fb4af2) collection on Hugging Face.*

NASA's comprehensive catalog of all known meteorite landings on Earth -- **45,716** records
spanning **1688** to **2013**, including 1,107 observed falls and 44,609 found specimens
across 466 classification types.

## Dataset description

This dataset contains every meteorite recorded in NASA's Meteorite Landings database,
sourced from The Meteoritical Society. Each record includes the meteorite's name,
classification, mass (where known), geographic coordinates, and whether the meteorite
was observed falling ("Fell") or found after the fact ("Found").

## Schema

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| `name` | string | Official meteorite name |
| `id` | int64 | Unique identifier |
| `nametype` | string | Name type: "Valid" or "Relict" |
| `recclass` | string | Meteorite classification (e.g. L5, H6, Iron-IVA) |
| `mass` | float64 | Mass in grams |
| `mass_kg` | float64 | Mass in kilograms |
| `fall` | string | "Fell" (observed fall) or "Found" (discovered later) |
| `year` | datetime | Year of fall or discovery |
| `reclat` | float64 | Recovery latitude (decimal degrees) |
| `reclong` | float64 | Recovery longitude (decimal degrees) |

## Quick stats

- **45,716** meteorite landings (1688--2013)
- **1,107** observed falls, **44,609** found specimens
- **45,585** records with known mass
- **466** distinct classification types
- Heaviest: **Hope** at **60,000.0 kg** (Iron, IVB)

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/meteorite-landings", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Observed falls sorted by mass
fell = df[df["fall"] == "Fell"].sort_values("mass_kg", ascending=False)

# Meteorites by classification
by_class = df["recclass"].value_counts().head(20)

# Map of all landings with coordinates
with_coords = df.dropna(subset=["reclat", "reclong"])
```

## Data source

[NASA Open Data Portal -- Meteorite Landings](https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/meteorite-landings),
maintained by The Meteoritical Society. Full dataset mirrored by the
[Wolfram Data Repository](https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Meteorite-Landings)
(NASA retired the original Socrata SODA API in 2025).

## Update schedule

Static dataset (meteorite records are updated infrequently).

## Related datasets

- [neo-close-approaches](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/neo-close-approaches) -- Near-Earth object close approaches from NASA JPL
- [confirmed-exoplanets](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/confirmed-exoplanets) -- NASA Exoplanet Archive confirmed planets
- [impact-risk](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/impact-risk) -- Sentry impact risk assessments

## Pipeline

Source code: [juliensimon/space-datasets](https://github.com/juliensimon/space-datasets)

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{meteorite_landings,
author = {Simon, Julien},
title = {Meteorite Landings},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Hugging Face},
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/meteorite-landings},
note = {Based on NASA/The Meteoritical Society meteorite landing data via Wolfram Data Repository}
}
```

## License

[CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)