1,000-pound fireball explodes 21 miles above the Earth. A piece was found in Texas
Days after a large fireball exploded with a startling kaboom over Texas, a small piece of the flaming space rock has been recovered.
The dark, smooth meteorite was found amid sand and scrub, the American Meteor Society said in a Feb. 18 Facebook post, sharing a photo of the fragment.
A fireball weighing 1,000 pounds broke apart 21 miles above the Earth on Feb. 15, scattering smaller pieces — meteorites — overhead, NASA said. It was moving at 27,000 mph with the energy of 8 tons of TNT.
Around the same time, many in the city of McAllen and other south Texas communities reported hearing an earth shaking boom, with hundreds of calls flooding into some local police departments, McClatchy previously reported.
Some caught glimpses of the meteor to the west of McAllen, bright enough to be seen even in daylight.
“Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground,” NASA said.
The American Meteor Society says the meteorite was able to be located using reported fireball sightings and weather radar data.
It’s the third piece of the meteor found so far, the group said, adding that the first two were located in Italy and France.
The Italian meteorite landed on someone’s balcony, the Guardian reported.
While NASA does not maintain a collection of meteorites, the organization asked that anyone who finds such objects to contact the Smithsonian.
“The meteor seen in the skies above McAllen is a reminder of the need for NASA and other organizations to increase our understanding and protection of Earth, to combine scientific and engineering expertise to advance human space exploration, to integrate terrestrial and planetary research for furthering our understanding of the solar system, and to promote successful space missions by mitigating risk,” the organization said in a release.
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