A rock hitting a space station is a meteorite or meteor?
(Not meteorite. It's not a meteorite until it has fallen on solid ground or water :-) ).
They're objects whose size is smaller than that of an asteroid, but larger than that of a micrometeoroid or space dust particle. Basically anything larger than a grain of sand, but not big enough to be an asteroid, is a meteoroid.
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void
that lies quiet in offering to thee
A meteor is really the optical phenomena of a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere.
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
-- from Emily - by Johanna Newsome