Those who saw the meteoroid fly across the sky on Wednesday thought they saw a shooting star—until they lost sight of the fireball and felt its impact as it struck Earth. Home security footage from residents west of McAllen, Texas, shows the meteorite’s impact shaking the ground, causing wildlife to flee and homes to shiver. Those who felt and heard the collision didn’t know what to make of it, and with so-called “spy balloons” and UFO conspiracies in the news cycle at the time, their best guesses were unsettling. Thankfully, NASA’s Johnson Space Center has since confirmed that the boom was caused by a meteorite, which struck Earth just north of Texas’ border with Mexico.
NASA’s Meteor Watch shared the agency’s statement on Facebook. The meteorite is believed to have been about two feet wide and 1,000 pounds before it entered Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 27,000 miles per hour. Atmospheric entry broke the meteorite into at least a few different fragments. American Meteor Society member and tireless fragment collector Robert Ward found the first of these pieces Saturday on private property in El Sauz, a tiny farm town an hour from McAllen’s city center.
The first fragment of this meteor to be found. (Credit: American Meteor Society)
Meteorites themselves aren’t uncommon, but impacts like this one are. Most rocky space masses burn up upon atmospheric entry, leaving only dusty particles in their wake. NASA says that car-sized asteroids strike Earth’s atmosphere about once a year, creating a generous fireball and turning to dust before impacting the ground. Now and then, however, larger masses survive their passage through Earth’s atmosphere. The consequences of such survival can be catastrophic.
NASA emphasized in its statement that the Texas meteorite only strengthens space agencies’ conviction regarding early asteroid and meteoroid detection systems. To this end, the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch NEOMIR sometime around 2030 to detect otherwise invisible masses that originate close to the Sun. Early detection would allow authorities near projected impact points to evacuate an area or instruct residents to stay away from windows until the mass has landed.
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