On July 28, a fireball swept across the skies of the US, with it being so large some feared it was hurtling to our planet. The International Meteor Organisation (IMO) received almost 70 reports from stunned onlookers across Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
Emily told the IMO: “It was concerning because I thought it was something crashing to Earth (or airplane/helicopter) but it was a bright orange with green and yellow tones shooting across the clear night skies and looked like it was heading downward.
“It was as bright as a firework but again the trajectory was all wrong and it was a single orb traveling extraordinarily fast.
“It was bigger than any shooting star I have ever seen.”
Tiffany added: “Remarkable sight. Like a gigantic, glittering firecracker shooting down from the sky.”
Asteroids and meteors produce a bright explosion of fire when they hit the atmosphere as it is the first time the space rock has ever met resistance.
Air seeps into the pores and cracks of the rock, pushing it apart and causing it to explode.
The IMO said: “Fireballs are meteors that appear brighter than normal.
“Due to the velocity at which they strike the Earth’s atmosphere, fragments larger than one millimetre have the capability to produce a bright flash as they streak through the heavens above.
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NASA is currently studying Asteroid Bennu, where its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft arrived in 2018 to gather more information about the space rock.
NASA fears the asteroid, which is 500 metres in length and has the potential to wipe out a country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
But NASA reiterates while there is a very small chance Earth could be impacted, “over millions of years, of all of the planets, Bennu is most likely to hit Venus.”