A bright light streaked over Kennesaw and another part of Georgia in the early hours of Monday morning prompting speculations on what the mysterious object is.
The fiery object was spotted at about 1:30 a.m. Those who saw it have described it as something characterized by bright colors with a long smoke-like tail trailing behind.
The American Meteor Society has received around 130 reports about the sighting from skywatchers, who were mostly from Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee with the object initially speculated to be a meteorite, a UFO or a piece of space junk.
A spokesperson from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that what appeared to be a fireball was a meteor since local authorities and the FAA did not have confirmed reports about a plane crash or any accident.
David Dundee, an astronomer from the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, however, noted that at 14,500 miles per hour, the bright object was traveling too slow for it to be a fireball or a meteor. Dundee said that videos of the object that show it being broken into pieces suggest that it could be a piece of space debris.
Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirmed this saying that the bright object was likely a piece of junk that entered the Earth's atmosphere speeding at over 14,000 miles per hour. NASA cameras were also able to track the mysterious object in the southeast.
"To be that bright it would have to be a large piece of space junk, maybe an empty fuel tank but not something small like a hammer," said Bill Cooke, from the U.S. space agency's Meteoroid Environmental Office.
Scientists say that sightings of space junks are not rare and may occur several times in a year. While it is more common for these materials to burn up before they hit the ground, some pieces manage to make an impact on Earth.
In a statement, Martin O'Donnell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Strategic Command, said that the object was a rocket body that re-entered our planet's atmosphere. The statement said that it has since been removed as a decayed object from the satellite catalog of the U.S.
NASA said that there are over 500,000 pieces of space junk that orbit the Earth so it is not surprising to receive mistaken fireball reports.
