www.news8austin.com Officials say mystery fireball in sky was meteor Updated: 2/15/2009 11:26:06 AM By: News 8 Austin Staff A few days ago, an American satellite and a Russian satellite collided 500 miles above the earth. A 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 was caused by falling debris from colliding satellites plummeting into earth's atmosphere. The U.S. Strategic Command also said Monday that the weekend shower of fireballs over Texas was not debris from last week's collision of two satellites over Siberia. They also said it was a natural phenomenon. What looked like a fireball streaked across the Texas sky Sunday morning, leading many people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris. Preliminary reports from Williamson County officials said a small aircraft went down, and then officials said it was likely space debris from two satellites crashing. FAA spokesman Roland Herwig said officials initially suspected the debris could be related to the collision. News 8 received numerous calls saying debris was falling around midmorning Sunday, what looked like a meteor. Some of the callers reported what looked like a fireball in the sky. A closer look at the fireball in the sky. Williamson County officials combed the area in a helicopter searching for any trace of a small aircraft landing, but were unable to find anything. News 8 Austin photojournalist Eddie Garcia caught the fiery streak in the Central Texas sky Sunday morning. The people in the footage running were not running from the fireball. They were actually running the Austin Marathon. At this time, Garcia's footage is believed to be the only news footage of this incident in the state of Texas. It's getting world-wide attention, and we've received many requests to interview Garcia. CNN reporter Heidi Collins did a live interview Monday morning with our News 8 photographer. He told viewers what he was thinking when he saw the fire in the sky. "At the time, I'm looking in the viewfinder, and I see something flying through the sky. It looks like it could be dust, it could be something. I look up, and no, it was something burning in the sky," Garcia said. The News 8 Web site was sluggish due to the heavy influx of online traffic with the video. The U.S. Strategic Command said the fireball was not debris from last week's crash between U.S. and Russian satellites. They said it was likely a meteor. CNN and News 8 Austin are both subsidiaries of Time Warner. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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