Comment: Oh, yeah, nothing to worry about, NASA tells us. We are always bombarded by man size meteors, they say, and it's just a coincidence that there are much more frequent and visible sightings above populated areas! But if our memory serves us well, until not so long ago we were told that such events happen only once in a while. Changing history and counting on public's short memory, anyone?

A robotic fireball-monitoring network

NASA's meteor-watching network, run by the Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall, currently consists of four robotic cameras: the two in Georgia, one in Huntsville, and one in southern Tennessee. These "smart" cameras are linked into a computer system that automatically analyzes their video, then calculates relevant information about incoming space rocks' trajectories and orbits.

Researchers hope to place a total of 15 such cameras in various locations throughout the eastern United States, which has few such systems, NASA officials said.

The overall goal of the camera system is to learn much more about the pieces of space rock that strike Earth and our atmosphere - how big they are, what they're made of and where they come from, researchers have said.