Fireball 10 times brighter than the moon streaks over Mississippi, triggering a massive boom

 It slammed into the ground with the force of 3 tonnes of TNT.

According to NASA, a fireball 10 times brighter than the moon swept across the skies across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi early Wednesday (April 27), causing a loud boom and stunning dozens of people.

 

Onlookers initially noticed the flaming meteor about 8:03 a.m. CDT, streaking above the Mississippi River not far from Alcorn, Mississippi. According to a NASA blogpost, the meteor's breakup caused many sonic booms and vibrations with the force of 3 tonnes of TNT.

 

TheVicksburg Post reported that a citizen of Vicksburg, Mississippi, saw a "orange fireball the size of a basketball with a white tail behind it."

 

The people of Earth weren't the only ones who got to see a spectacular light show. The Geostationary Light Mapper (GLM) onboard two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites observed multiple dazzling lights as the space rock broke up in the atmosphere at the same time.

 

The Geostationary Light Mapper equipment onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental 16 and 17 detected the fireball, displayed here as a speck of intense blue light, near the Louisiana-Mississippi line. (Image Credit NOAA)

In a NASAblog post, Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, commented, "This is one of the finer events I have seen in the GLM data."

 

According to NASA, the fireball was caused by a hunk of asteroid measuring about 3.3 feet (1 metre) in diameter and weighing around 90 pounds (40 kilogrammes). According to NASA, it reached Earth's atmosphere at 55,000 mph (34,175 km/h) and then broke up into numerous smaller fragments before completely dissipating over the wetlands near Minorca, Louisiana.

 

Accordingto the American Meteor Society, fireballs are astonishingly bright meteors that blaze brighter than Venus. This fireball was a bolide, which meant it was not only spectacular but also had a tail that erupted in a bright flash of light.

 

The fireball was seen by more than 30 witnesses, according to ABC News.