According to data from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), the celestial body began at an altitude of around 122 km over the town of Don Benito, province of Badajoz, in Spain, moved northwest, crossed Portugal, and ended at a height of about 54 km over the Atlantic Ocean.

But, contrary to what was speculated, and despite the Civil Protection having issued the alert and carried out night searches, the information from the SMART project - operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) from the stations meteor observation stations located in Huelva, La Hita (Toledo), Calar Alto, Sierra Nevada, La Sagra (Granada), Seville and Marçà (Tarragona) - they say that no fragments reached the ground.

The event was analysed by the researcher responsible for the SMART project, astrophysicist José María Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia IAA-CSIC.

The analysis revealed that the phenomenon occurred when a rocky body entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of around 161 thousand kilometres per hour, and with an almost level trajectory, with an inclination of only around ten degrees in relation to the horizontal.


"When it hit the air at this speed, the surface of the rock (the meteoroid) heated up and became incandescent. And it was this incandescence that manifested itself in the form of a fireball".

Along its trajectory, it had several explosions that caused sudden increases in its luminosity and were due to several abrupt ruptures in the rock. The total distance the fireball travelled in the Earth's atmosphere before extinguishing was about 500 km.