Mysterious Fireball Reported Over 3 Southern States in US

NASA Says Meteor Weighing Over a Tonne Sped Through Atmosphere at 48,000kmh

- Mark Walker and Adeel Hassan

From Georgia to South Carolina and Tennessee, a mysterious flaming object could be seen streaking across the sky early in the afternoon of June 26, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake, and then dramatically plummeting towards the ground.

Scientists, meteorologists, and even law enforcement officials in those states were working to figure out what had caught the attention of drivers and observers in such a wide swath of the South. The sightings prompted hundreds of calls to the authorities.

Whatever it was, a small object that may have broken off from it punched through the roof of a home just south of Atlanta, cracking the home's laminate flooring.

Hours later, after widespread speculation, NASA declared that the object in question was a meteor barreling through the Earth's atmosphere at over 48,000kmh.

Mr. Bill Cooke, the chief of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said the meteor was about 90cm in diameter and weighed over a tonne.

It was first seen 77km above the town of Oxford, Georgia, Mr. Cooke said. It began to disintegrate 43.5km over West Forest, Georgia, "unleashing an energy of about 20 tonnes of TNT," he said in a statement.