Fireball Spotted Flying Over Texas; Was It Space Junk? [WATCH VIDEO]

Residents of Texas recently spotted a bright fireball flying across the early morning sky. Based on eyewitness reports and a video of the incident, the object could be a piece of space debris that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

The recent fireball event was mainly spotted by eyewitnesses from Texas. According to the reports compiled by the American Meteor Society (AMS), the incident happened on June 26 at 5:30 a.m. UTC or 1:30 a.m. EDT.

In total, the AMS received five reports from eyewitnesses, which include a video of the fiery object. Compared to other fireball events caused by meteors, the object spotted over Texas moved in an odd direction.

As seen in the video, the object moved almost horizontally, which is very different from other fireball sightings that moved downwards to the ground. In addition, unlike fireballs, the object in the video did not have a bright tail behind it.

Some of the eyewitnesses noted that the object fragmented as it flew across the sky. One of the eyewitnesses stated that the fireball did not produce notable reactions before it disappeared.

“At first I thought perhaps it was fireworks, but there were no other lights, no booms, was too high in the sky, traveled in a perfect arc from high in the sky to the horizon, and did not appear to fade or fizzle,” eyewitness Mandy G. from Mountain City, Texas stated in her report.

Based on the video and the descriptions provided by some of the eyewitnesses in their reports, the fiery object that flew over Texas could be a piece of space junk that burned up as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. It also matched the description of a falling space junk as explained by an expert from NASA.

Back in 2015, Bill Cooke, the head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Alabama, clarified that a fireball that was spotted over Louisiana was not a piece of space debris and not a meteor.

The description Cooke provided matched the characteristics of the fireball that recently appeared over Texas.

“It moved too slowly,” Cooke said in a previous statement, according to Space.com. “This thing hit the atmosphere moving between 14,000 and 16,000 mph [22,500 to 25,750 km/h], and while that sounds fast, meteors move at 24,000 mph [39,000 km/h] or faster.”