The bright object traveled over at least five European countries.
A rock fragment pierced the roof of a house in Koblenz and left a hole the size of a football in one of the rooms. Nobody was injured.
A meteorite fragment fell on a house in Koblenza German city located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in the southwest of the country, at around 7 pm on Sunday.
The impact damaged the roof and left a hole the size of a football in one of the rooms of the house, according to local authorities. There were no injuries.
“There were people in the building, but not inside that room,” said Benjamin Marx, head of operations at the Koblenz Fire Department.
It is not yet known whether other meteorite fragments will be found. Initially, there were no reports of damage elsewhere. According to Marx, the celestial body was fragmented into several parts.
Iranian missile?
The meteorite’s passage through the skies of Germany fueled speculation on social media about the possibility that it was an Iranian missile, according to police in the city of Kaiserslautern, also in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Described by locals as a “bright flying object with a brief trail of fire”, the fireball in the sky can be seen even from a great distance.
“Hundreds of kilometers away it was still possible to see it,” said Carolin Liefke, deputy director of the House of Astronomy in Heidelberg. There have also been sightings in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Switzerland.
The person responsible said she had spotted the celestial body by chance. It was “a beautiful luminous spectacle”, he said. “It was possible to observe it for several seconds.”
When a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, it often breaks up into many small fragments. Some burn and disintegrate, while others reach the ground. These pieces are called meteorites or meteorite fragments. According to experts, they come mainly from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and may be several billion years old. They are remnants of the formation of our Solar System. The luminous phenomenon in the sky is called a meteor.
Meteorite impacts on Earth are very rare. In Germany, in April 2023, several fragments of a meteorite fell into Elmshorn. The largest fragment weighed about 3.7 kilograms, was examined by scientists and later displayed. At the time, it was considered the largest meteorite fragment found in Germany in around 100 years.
