Often, when rocks from space hurtle towards Earth, they burn up in the atmosphere before actually reaching us. The ones that vaporise become a meteor — or a shooting star.

The lucky few that make the whole journey land on Earth as meteorites. Once on the surface, these meteorites can exist as a single rock for thousands of years, except for a little weathering.

Asteroids are much bigger, such as the one 63 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs, and 2012 DA14 which narrowly missed the Earth in 2013.

Here are some of the biggest space rocks ever to crash into us and survive.

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