Last Saturday, the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) detected a “fireball in the sky of the northern Kingdom of Morocco, which is believed to be a meteor rock coming from space.”
And according to Spanish media, “Scientists of the Spanish Institute believe that the rock belongs to an asteroid, which died after entering the Earth’s airspace at a record speed, before it disintegrated and became extinct at an altitude of 31,000 km north of the Kingdom.”
The same sources highlighted that “the matter was monitored through the ‘smart’ project, which is supervised by the aforementioned institute, and headed by Jose Maria Madido, who revealed that this fireball was detected late Saturday.”
Madido said, “The speed of this space rock reached 61,000 km per hour, forming a strong fiery glow at an altitude of more than 97,000 km over the town of ‘Ibohjarin’, before it disintegrated after a path of decline of about 31,000 km over the town of ‘Bani Okil’.”
And the “SWEMN Network”, through its official account on “YouTube”, published a video documenting “the moment of observing the fiery meteorite rock, which shows a sharp white glow during its fall, before it completely disappears from view.”
The same source indicated that “the rock headed rapidly towards the north of Morocco during its fall, before disappearing near the city of Nador, specifically in the town of Bani Wakil,” noting that “this bright glow was very visible to the residents of southern Spain.”
This is not the first time that the Institute of Astrophysics in Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) has announced its monitoring of meteor rocks in the Moroccan sky, as it announced last January that it had “observed a glowing rock at an altitude of 146 km in the children of Sidi Abdel Hakim in the Jerada region, coming from one of the comets in space.” , at a record speed of 255,000 kilometers per hour.
In mid-September 2021, the same institute announced that “a fireball was detected in the sky late at night, in the northwest of the Kingdom of Morocco, at a speed of 245,000 km.”
The detectors are working in the “smart” project, developed by the “Fireballs and Meteorites in Southwest Europe” network (SWEMN Network), with the aim of “regular monitoring of sky meteors, in order to record and study the impact of rocks from various bodies in the solar system on the Earth’s atmosphere.”
