Arizona meteor was traveling over 40,000 mph

For a brief moment early Thursday, the Arizona night sky lit up like it was day. Just before 4 a.m., a massive fireball meteor exploded in the sky. The space rock raced through our atmosphere at over 40,000 mph, NASA estimates, and the flash was 10 times brighter than a full moon.

It was the brightest meteor event ever observed by NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network, says Bill Cooke, a meteor expert at NASA. Turns out it was actually a small asteroid with a diameter of five feet and weighing a “few tons,” said NASA, whose missions include finding and tracking near-Earth asteroids. READ MORE