U.S. officials confirm first known interstellar meteor struck Earth in 2014

U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that a small space rock that traveled through the skies of Papua New Guinea in 2014 before crashing off the northeast coast was in fact a meteor that traveled from another solar system.

The meteor, known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, crash-landed on Jan. 8, 2014. It was actually identified as an interstellar meteor in a 2019 study co-written by Amir Siraj, who at the time was an undergraduate student at Harvard University, and Abraham Loeb, a professor of science at Harvard.

But it was not confirmed to be an interstellar meteor until the U.S. Space Command released a document on the discovery.

In the document, U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. John Shaw said officials reviewed additional data related to Siraj and Loeb's finding and "confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory."