17 April 2010
On the evening of 14 April 2010, a rooftop webcam, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, captured the final seconds of the fall of a fireball, a meteor that flares brilliantly, as it plunges into Earth's atmosphere.
Eyewitness accounts revealed the fireball was moving from west to east, and fragmented into many pieces. Numerous witnesses also reported crackling sounds and a sonic boom. It is not known yet if any debris from the shattered celestial intruder hit the ground.
Data collected by scientists at NASA's Marshall's Space Flight Center indicate the space rock was approximately 1 meter across. This meteoroid may have originated in the asteroid belt, the zone of minor planets and meteoroids, extending between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. When the fireball blazed high in the atmosphere, it released energy equivalent to the detonation of approximately 20 tons of TNT.
NASA detects, monitors and characterizes objects passing close to Earth, using ground-based observatories and space telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, also known as "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits, to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our home planet.
Further Reading
Wisconsin Fireball Caught On Tape
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-130
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist