Meteorite did not kill man in Tamil Nadu, says NASA

Scientists from NASA, the US Space Agency, have now stated that the cause of death of the bus driver who was killed in a Vellore college was not a meteorite. They believe it was a land-based explosion. A report in the New York Times states that after examining the photos, NASA concluded it looked more like a land-based explosion and not like an object from space had hit him. 

In an e-mail to the New York Times, Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defence officer, wrote that a "death by meteorite impact was so rare that one has never been scientifically confirmed in recorded history. There have been reports of injuries, but even those were extremely rare before the Chelyabinsk event three years ago.”

The rock that was found also looked more like it was from the earth as meteorites are often cool when touched adds the daily.

Prof. G.C. Anupama, the dean of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, told a leading English daily that they were analysing samples of the rock. She was quoted as saying, “Considering that there was no prediction of a meteorite shower and there was no meteorite shower observed, this certainly is a rare phenomenon if it is a meteorite."

The explosion in the private engineering college in Vellore left a large crater and shattered window panes on buses and the college building. The driver died of injuries sustained in the explosion.