Some people in the Ozarks saw what was believed to be a meteor in the sky late Monday evening, and now NASA has confirmed that was, in fact, what it was.
Witnesses in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Minnesota reported seeing a bright fireball just before 9 p.m., according to NASA Meteor Watch on Facebook.
NASA analyzed those accounts, studied video from St. Louis and Albany, Missouri and determined that the fireball first became visible 59 miles above Cedar Hill, southwest of St. Louis. It moved to the northwest at 33,000 miles per hour, according to NASA, and traveled 70 miles through Earth’s atmosphere “before ablating 12 miles above the town of Bridgeport, northeast of Hermann.”
NASA believes it was caused by a fragment of an asteroid and that it was about 16 inches in diameter, about the size of a basketball, and that it weighed more than 200 pounds.
It was not part of the Taurid meteor shower, according to NASA.
