A hunk of “space junk” from a blazing meteor that streaked across the Southeast’s daytime sky this week — triggering panic below — may have smashed into a Georgia home, officials said.
The orbital rock smashed through the roof and punched through the ceiling of the Peach State home just as the fiery object lit up the skies over South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia around noon Thursday.
“A piece of unidentified debris penetrated the roof of a residence and entered the home, with no reported injuries,” a Henry County Emergency Management spokesperson told FOX Carolina.
“At this time, the exact nature of the object has not been confirmed. However, after consulting with the National Weather Service, it has been advised that the debris may be either a fragment of a meteor or potentially space debris, commonly referred to as ‘space junk.”’
The falling rock left the homeowner in “awe,” after it broke through roughly a quarter-inch of sheetrock, officials told WSB-TV.
The fast-moving meteor was first spotted 48 miles above Oxford, Georgia, zooming at a blistering 30,000 miles per hour, according to Bill Cooke, a lead at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
The bright white fireball — measuring 3 feet across and weighing more than a ton — later exploded over West Forest, Georgia, unleashing a blast of energy equal to roughly 30 tons of TNT.
“The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area,” Cooke said in a statement to CBS News.
Videos shared on social media captured the startling flame plunging from the sky.
Shocked locals Melanie Whitlock and her daughter, Amber Hudson, heard and felt the blast in Covington — more than 130 miles from where the meteor erupted.
“It was really, really scary,” Whitlock told WSB-TV.
“It was like a loud boom noise, but it sounded like someone stomping. And then the shake, the whole house was shaking. It definitely shook us up.”
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