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(meteorobs) El Paso Fireball/Norad




Norman McLeod's friend who worked for Norad in the 60's says that Norad isn't
interested one bit about meteors when detected. Well, maybe not in the 60's,
but they definitely took note and recorded the events since around 1975
because the energy given off was equivalent to nuclear devices.  Something
they definitely were interested in keeping tabs on. An article came out in
 Sky and telescope (I believe in 1994? I can find it if requested...I still
have it) talking about over a hundred such events that Norad recorded from
it's surveillance satellites. As of a few years ago, IMO thru the requests of
Peter Brown and Andre Knoeffel can ask DoD to check their tapes for a certain
date and time for possible bright fireballs to obtain data. When the El Paso
fireball occurred, I was contacted within 2 hours from a witness. I
immediately contacted Peter and Andre and they shortly afterwards was able to
obtain data from NORAD. I don't know how soon they got this data...but I
believe it was within a few days?  As for the El Paso fireball....I'm rather
surprised that residents in the area that reported falling metal flakes
hasn't cleaned out their rain gutters to have examined for possible meteoroic
debris? Maybe even their rain gauges? Or even follow one of these flakes
down? Or run a large magnet over the ground to recover different types of
iron that would probably look a little different than  what would normally be
found? I believe the energy detected by the Dod satellites was around 500
kilotons of TNT?...which equated to about a 20 ton object. The object also
detonated at 36 kilometers. I would think that any manmade space object would
be constructed of sturdier materials so that it wouldn't detonate high up in
the atmosphere? Most likely burn all the way to the ground at that mass and
not explode? Though stony meteoroids do frequently (about 8
times/year)detonate in the atmosphere at this general altitude and detected
by satellites... I personally wouldn't suspect the El Paso fireball to be
anything other than a natural object.
George Zay