This morning at 6:43 AM Central Standard Time, eyewitnesses across Texas and adjacent states saw a very bright fireball streaking across the sky, moving roughly east to west. It was also recorded by a NASA meteor camera in Mayhill, New Mexico some five hundred miles to the West, which is very unusual and testifies to the brightness of the event. This was not the re-entry of Kosmos 2251, which was destroyed in a collision with an Iridium satellite in February 2009; it is a meteor, most likely a fragment from the asteroid belt and not associated with the Geminid meteor shower.

Preliminary results indicate that there are meteorites from this meteor on the ground north of Houston, Texas--analysis is currently underway to refine the impact area. If pieces are recovered, it will be the 13th meteorite fall recorded in the state since 1909, and the first since Ash Creek, which fell in February of 2009.

A video (in Windows Media format) of the fireball as recorded by the NASA camera in New Mexico is attached to this message. The Moon is the bright object at lower center; the fireball is on the horizon at left and is surrounded by a white box when the camera detects it. Up is north, and left is east in the video.