On Feb. 22, at around 23:22 UT, numerous casual eyewitnesses mainly located at the south and center of Spain saw a bright and slow meteor crossing the night sky. The mag. -9 sporadic event was generated by a meteoroid following an asteroid-like orbit. This particle hit the atmosphere at about 43,000 km/h and generated a fireball that began at an altitude of about 70 km over Almería (Andalusia), and ended at a height of around 29 km over the Mediterranean Sea.
The event was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Hita (Toledo), and Sevilla. The fireball has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC). According to this analysis, a fragment with a mass of around 25 to 200 grams could have survived, falling into the sea as a meteorite.
