Meanings
noun
- literatureThe arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of a planet.
“Listen up, grunts. We'll be making planetfall in T-minus three minutes. You'll be joining the war against the Scourge, an alien race of soulless, ruthless automatons.”
2024 August 12, Joe Saunders, “The Battle of Zab 9” (1:00 from the start), in Solar Opposites, season 5, episode 9, spoken by Screaming Grunt (Nick Reczynski)
Origin
From planet + fall, by analogy with landfall.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
planetfall. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/planetfall
MLA
“planetfall.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/planetfall. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “planetfall,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/planetfall.
Source: planetfall on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.