A meteor that streaked across the skies over the South Pacific in 2014 was in fact an object that arrived from outside the solar system, U.S. Space Command confirmed on Wednesday.

In a memo signed by Space Command's Deputy Commander Lt. General John E. Shaw and the service's chief scientist Joel Mozer, Space Force confirmed that a meteor that flew over Manus Island, Papua New Guinea on Jan. 8, 2014, was indeed an interstellar object. The meteor is known as CNEOS 2014-01-08.

In issuing this assessment, Space Force endorsed a 2019 study by Harvard University researchers Abraham Loeb and Amir Siraj that analyzed the 2014 incident and determined that the object originated from another solar system.

Siraj, who began his research into the meteor during his undergraduate studies alongside Loeb, was drawn to the incident during their examination of Oumuamua, a 2017 meteor that was believed to be the first interstellar object. After examining years of analysis that relied in part on classified satellites' data, the duo reached a conclusion that the Manus Island fireball was an interstellar object and Oumuamua by three years.

In his memo, Lt. Gen. Shaw said officials reviewed additional data related to Siraj and Loeb's finding and "confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory."

Siraj said that the next step would be seeing if it would be possible to scour the ocean floor off Manus Island to locate any fragments of the meteor.

“It would be a big undertaking, but we're going to look at it in extreme depth because the possibility of getting the first piece of interstellar material is exciting enough to check this very thoroughly and talk to all the world experts on ocean expeditions to recover meteorites,” Siraj told Vice News.

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