NASA confirms a 2-foot meteor hit Texas, but assures people the risk from space rocks is low

NASA confirmed Thursday that a loud rumble heard over McAllen, Texas, was the sound of a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere and breaking up as it dispersed across the area.

The rock was 2 feet in diameter and weighed 1,000 pounds. POT he said before it broke into small pieces and scattered across the area.

No damage was reported, but terrified locals assumed it was an earthquake and shared stories on social media of their homes shaking with the impact.

NASA said that anyone who thinks they have found a fragment should contact the Smithsonian.

They assured people that space rocks posed little threat to the public.

“Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow down as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking up into small fragments before hitting the ground,” NASA said.

“Meteors cool quickly and generally do not pose a risk to the public.”

The rock streaked across the sky around 5 p.m. Wednesday before a rumble was heard.

Footage showed the flaming object shooting across the sky as home surveillance cameras caught the moment it crashed, creating a loud explosion and shaking houses.

The National Weather Service reported the object, saying its light-detecting satellites from space picked up the signal. The agency then plotted the occurrence on its Geostationary Lightning Mapper.

Houston Air Traffic Control also received reports from two aircraft about a possible meteorite near the city, according to Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra.

A meteor is known as a meteor until it hits the ground.

“Where the exact point of impact is unknown,” Guerra said. “There have been no reports of any damage in that area.”

One woman said she thought it was an earthquake.

“I went out to see what had happened,” he wrote on Facebook.

“I thought it was some kind of earthquake, but I didn’t see anything. It’s so strange that we don’t have earthquakes here in Texas.

Another described it as a sensation similar to a “gas explosion.”

“So, we had a loud bang, like a gas explosion this afternoon,” one person wrote. “The ground shook, as did the windows and the house.”

Meteors are pieces of asteroids that have broken off, once they enter the Earth’s atmosphere they become meteorites. An asteroid the size of Mount Everest is what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson recently appeared on CBS this morning to discuss how officials are preparing to save Earth and combat asteroids, following one that appeared in northwestern Europe on Monday.

“We’ve always known that we don’t want to get hit,” Tyson said.

‘We’ve been hit, and let’s talk to the dinosaurs about what happens when you get hit.

“We remember dinosaurs because they have big teeth and are ferocious, but few people think that 70 percent of all species in the world, of life, went extinct in that very episode.”

Tyson continued, “The little ones may come, and we may not go extinct, but it may take out our network, and we may have to revive civilization.”

The astrophysicist called the asteroid-stopping operation “the most expensive mission ever” and said it wasn’t as simple as just “exploiting” it.

Earlier this week, an asteroid lit up the night sky over the English Channel after entering Earth’s atmosphere in the early hours of Monday.

The 3-foot meteoroid created a shooting star and “airburst” that could be seen across southern England and Wales and across parts of northern France as far as Paris.

The rock, named 2023 CX1, entered the atmosphere about two miles off the French coast at 3 a.m., creating a fireball as it disintegrated into small pieces that landed in the sea.

It was only the seventh time an asteroid impact had been successfully forecast, in what the European Space Agency said was “a sign of rapid advances in global asteroid detection capabilities.”

For scientists, forecasting harmless asteroids like the one this morning is considered good practice for spotting those that could pose a risk to the planet.