NASA Says There Are At Least 5 Fireballs Recorded Flying Over United States

NASA Meteor Watch received "several reports" of fireballs racing over the skies of the United States on Friday night.

In a Facebook post, the space agency claimed that at least five fireballs were seen above the United States last week.

Above 80 eyewitness statements were submitted in connection with an incident at 7:40 p.m. ET Friday over the North Carolina coast.

According to NASA, the meteor skirted the North Carolina coast and was seen 48 miles above the ocean off Camp Lejeune. At 32,000 miles per hour, the meteor was likewise moving northeast. After flying 26 miles through Earth's upper atmosphere, the heavenly object exploded 28 miles over Morehead City.

However, because all witnesses are west of the fireball, the "trajectory solution" has a higher level of uncertainty than normal, according to the agency.

More Than 150 Reports Of Flying Fireballs Recorded Over US Skies

The American Meteor Society registered 151 reports of a fireball seen over four states on the same night.

NASA also included a link to a video of the occurrence submitted to the organization and has over 318,000 views.

A fireball is a meteor that achieves a "visual magnitude of -3 or brighter when viewed at the observer's zenith" and might be visible across a large region, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

(Photo : Alex Alishevskikh via NASA)
This image of a vapor trail was captured about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the Chelyabinsk meteor event, about one minute after the house-sized asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere.

ALSO READ: Giant Meteor Lights Up The Sky Over France, United Kingdom

Witnesses report seeing fireballs far less frequently during the day than at night. The objects seldom stay whole as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere.

What Are Fireballs?

News Observer, citing NASA, said fireballs, also known as shooting stars, are "spectacular enough to be viewed across a very broad region." While they are occasionally spotted by "ground-based observers" at night, they are far less common during the day.

Meteors and fireballs, according to NASA, are the visible trajectories of meteoroids, asteroid fragments, and comet fragments circling the sun that have reached the Earth's atmosphere at enormous speeds.

The space agency added that the meteoroids that generate fireballs are typically too tiny to stay in one piece as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere. However, bits are occasionally recovered on the ground.

Newsweek said meteors reach the Earth's atmosphere and break up regularly, making for a spectacular and powerful spectacle. In 2021 alone, the AMS lists 625 such occurrences that are so well-known that they are observed in numerous nations.

When incident 5366-2021 raced through the sky over Europe at 5:47 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 5, it was recorded by 636 eyewitnesses from England to France.

Because asteroids and comets formed about the same time as the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago, and haven't altered much since then, examining their pieces can educate us about the basic elements that our planet was built from.

Anything smaller than a football field has a tendency to disintegrate before reaching the planet's surface, resulting in a brilliant flare like the one seen above North Carolina on Friday.

This indicates that just 5% of meteor pieces that enter the atmosphere make it to the Earth. The microscopic bits that survive entrance are known as meteorites. They range in size from pebbles to fists, making them difficult to identify from Earth rocks, even though meteorites typically have a glossy or burned surface.