NASA Says a Meteor Burnt Up Over the Statue of Liberty

Noor Al-Sibai
·2 min read
6

Boom Clap

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... a meteor?

NASA Meteor Watch has confirmed in a Facebook post that a loud booming and shaking heard and felt throughout New York City and New Jersey were caused in part by a meteor burning up over Midtown Manhattan on July 16.

Per a "very crude determination of the trajectory of the meteor," as the meteor department described it, the "daylight fireball" was first visible about 49 miles above the New York Harbor before burning up just over the Statue of Liberty, disintegrating just 29 miles above the famous landmark.

The agency added that any additional building rumblings could have been the result of "military activity in the vicinity around the time of the fireball" and that no known debris fell to Earth.

Scared City

All the same, the situation no doubt freaked out New Yorkers who not only dealt with a surprise earthquake earlier this year but who are still forced to contend with 9/11's psychic damage.

"No one from the federal government reached out to us," recounted Aries Dela Cruz, a spokesperson for the NYC Office of Emergency Management, in an interview with The City.

Dela Cruz, whose now-viral tweet about the incident alerted locals to the source of the sound, said that his office spent much of the day reaching out to law enforcement in the surrounding areas to try to figure out what happened.

In a subsequent statement, NASA Meteor Watch attempted to explain itself.

"Many folks are under the impression that NASA tracks everything in space," the department explained. "We do keep track of asteroids that are capable of posing a danger to us Earth dwellers, but small rocks like the one producing this fireball are only about a foot in diameter, incapable of surviving all the way to the ground."

"We do not (actually cannot) track things this small at significant distances from the Earth," it continued, "so the only time we know about them is when they hit the atmosphere and generate a meteor or a fireball."

The meteor department got one last quip in, too.

"NASA watches the natural stuff," the statement reads. "The Department of Defense keeps track of satellites and orbital debris."

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