Fireball in Sky Identified

The fireball that blazed across the Texas sky and sparked numerous weekend calls to law enforcement agencies now can be considered an identified flying object.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday the fireball was a natural phenomenon -- not flying space junk -- and a North Texas astronomer said more specifically that it was probably a pickup truck-sized meteor with the consistency of concrete.

The object was visible Sunday morning from Austin to Dallas and into East Texas. In Central Texas, the Williamson County sheriff's office received so many emergency calls that it sent a helicopter aloft to look for debris from a plane crash.

The FAA backed off its weekend claim that the fireball possibly was caused by falling debris from colliding satellites plummeting into earth's atmosphere.

SATELLITE THEORY

The U.S. Strategic Command said there was no connection to the sightings over Texas and Tuesday's collision of satellites from the U.S. and Russia.

"There is no correlation between the debris from that collision and those reports of re-entry," said Maj. Regina Winchester, with STRATCOM.

The FAA notified pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible space debris after a collision Tuesday between U.S. and Russian communication satellites. The chief of Russia's Mission Control says clouds of debris from the collision will circle Earth for thousands of years and threaten numerous satellites.