It streaked across the Central Texas sky Sunday morning in a bright yellow flash with a boom, leaving a trail of smoke. The FAA thought it might be from Russia.
The media, bloggers and the Twitterverse followed the feds' lead.
But they were all wrong.
It turned out it wasn't debris from Tuesday's collision of two satellites over Russia after all, according to the Domestic Events Network of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Federal authorities now believe the source was not manmade.
On Saturday, the FAA issued a notice for pilots to be on the lookout for falling space debris until further notice. On Sunday night, that notice was removed and being rewritten to attribute the concern to a "natural source."
Both the U.S. Strategic Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command said the fireball seen across Central and South Texas at 11 a.m. Sunday had nothing to do with the remnants of the abandoned Russian satellite and a working satellite owned by U.S.-based Iridium Satellite LLC. They collided Tuesday.
STRATCOM has been following the debris field from the satellites since it was created and said it was nowhere near Texas. NORAD said it was not tracking any debris over North America at that time.
According to witnesses, the streak appeared for a few seconds and was followed by either an explosion or a rumbling sound like the passing of a jet. It left a trail of smoke.
Austin Marathon fans reported seeing the streak while watching the race.
"The only reason I noticed it was I was looking way down the road," said Matt Stiles, a reporter with the Houston Chronicle who was in Austin to cheer for a friend in the race. "I saw it and kind of had to do a double take, and then it was gone."
At the same time, the FAA received reports from residents and police agencies across Central and South Texas of a similar meteor-like flash or "a fireball" accompanied by a loud noise.
Stiles said that what he saw reminded him of the streaks he saw from the space shuttle Columbia crash Feb. 1, 2003.
Earlier, FAA spokesman Roland Herwig said he did not know where his agency got the information it based its notice on.
Meteors hit Earth's atmosphere every day, and most are smaller than a grain of sand and go unnoticed, said Joe Wheelock, a spokesman for the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis.
While seeing one in the daytime is rare and usually difficult because the sun outshines the light from the meteor, it does happen, Wheelock said.
"All a fireball is, is a really bright meteor burning up in the atmosphere," he said.
Even the flash Sunday was not bright enough for everyone to see.
While Stiles was comparing notes with others who had seen and heard the same thing he did, his girlfriend standing next to him did not believe him.
"It was funny," he said. "Even after the guy next to me said he heard the same thing, she did not believe me."
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter