(WJBF) – Residents across the CSRA, and even as far as Columbia, have reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky, Thursday.
NewsChannel 6 has received numerous calls and messages regarding the sighting. This video was captured on I-20 in Aiken County on a Tesla dashcam by Bryan Jennings Updyke.
According to Bill Cooke, lead at NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, the object was a meteor, first seen at 48 miles above Oxford, Georgia, moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour.
It reportedly disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, unleashing an energy of about 20 tons of TNT, which created the booms that residents in the area heard.
The fireball seen was produced by an asteroid fragment that was about 3 feet in diameter, weighing over one ton.
