To a planetary scientist, every meteor is data. The light curve — how bright it gets, how fast it fades — reveals the object's size, speed, and structure. The spectrum of its light reveals composition. Networks of cameras (like NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network) triangulate trajectories to calculate orbits. This tells us where the debris came from: which comet, which asteroid family. Some meteors are interstellar — visitors from other star systems. The first confirmed one, 'Oumuamua, wasn't a meteor but proved such objects exist. A meteorite in hand is even better. We can date it, measure its exposure to cosmic rays, and reconstruct the history of the solar system. The Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 was recorded by hundreds of dashcams. Scientists used those videos to reconstruct its orbit and origin in the asteroid belt. Science turns a fleeting streak into a window on deep time.