A fireball
that lit up the sky over parts of Texas early Sunday was not caused by debris
from a satellite collision last week, and more likely stemmed from a falling meteor, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials have said.
The
fireball, which appeared over a wide swath of Texas, loosed sonic booms
that rattled windows and shook houses, according to reports from residents who
called their local law enforcement agencies. A similar sighting was reported
late Friday over parts of eastern central Kentucky.
FAA
spokesperson Roland Herwig told the Associated Press that the fireball
was most likely created by a natural phenomenon and not man-made
satellite debris.
Over the
weekend, FAA officials said the Texas fireball could possibly have been sparked
by re-entering debris caused during
the Feb. 10 collision of a U.S. Iridium communications satellite and a
defunct Russian military satellite. The rare, and devastating, smash-up created
two large clouds of debris made up of hundreds of individual pieces of wreckage
that are currently being tracked by the U.S. Defense Department's Space
Surveillance Network. The network continuously monitors the more than 18,000 man-made
objects in Earth orbit.
The FAA released several weekend advisories to pilots warning of the potential
hazard of falling satellite debris. Those advisories were cancelled Sunday, Herwig
said.
Preston
Starr, the observatory manager at the University of
North Texas, told the Associated Press that Sunday's fireball was
likely caused by a meteor streaking through Earth's atmosphere at between 15,000
mph and 40,000 mph. The object would have been the size of a truck and have the
consistency of concrete, Starr said, adding that such objects burn up in Earth's
atmosphere between eight and 10 times each year.
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