East Jakarta meteorite was as big as coconut

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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The meteorite that fell from the sky at Duren Sawit, East Jakarta, on Thursday (April 25) is believed to have been the size of a coconut, an outer space expert said.

Thomas Djamaluddin, a senior researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan), said here Monday the agency also had established the object was a sporadic meteorite.

The object was actually part of a space rock that had fallen apart and not the remnant of a comet, he said.

Thomas said the meteorite was also known to have a fragile structure and may have disintegrated on impact because the Lapan team had not found any object that was still intact at spot where it reached the ground.

The meteorite that fell in East Jakarta damaging three houses is the first known to have hit a residential area in the country.

In the past,, several meteorites had falled in open spaces such as in Bone, South Sulawesi and Jimbaran, Bali.

The Lapan team had now dicontinued its examination of the crash site so that the owners of the damaged houses could clean up the debris from the impact.

The houise owners were asked to report to the authorities immediately if they found any strange alien objects, another lapan official, Sri Kaloka, said.(*)

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