Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Texas Fireball

The fireball seen over a large part of Texas Sunday was likely a meteor, according to the FAA. Speculation had centered on debris from last Tuesday's crash involving an Iridium satellite and a spent Russian satellite, but the FAA concluded that was probably not the case.

Estimates of the size and speed of the object range up to the size of a truck with the consistency of concrete traveling between 15,000 and 40,000 miles per hour. Sonic booms were heard and felt over a wide area.

No crash site seems to have been found yet, even though finding it would be a matter of extending the flight path to its intersection with the ground. Perhaps, of course, the object never reached the ground, burning up in the atmosphere instead. Eight to ten such fireballs occur every year, and not all of them reach the surface.

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