Strange Fireball In TX Sky
Monday, February 16th, 2009What appeared to be a fireball streaked across the Texas sky on Sunday morning, leading several people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris.
“We don’t know what it was,” said Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Roland Herwig.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office used a helicopter to investigate after callers said they thought they saw a plane crashing, a spokesman said.
“We don’t doubt what people saw” but authorities found nothing, said spokesman John Foster.
The U.S. Strategic Command said there was no correlation 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 alerted pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible space fragments 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 surround Earth for thousands of years and threaten several satellites.