American space agency NASA lately asked an Australian college for facts of a reported meteorite crash on their campus on Monday. But regardless of grabbing the interest of the world’s most prominent space agency, the crash turned out to be fake news.
According to 7 News, reports of a meteorite crashing into the grounds of a college in Queensland started to go viral right after photographs from the ‘space landing’ had been shared on Facebook. The pics had been shared on a Facebook web page referred to as ‘Australia crash investigation unit’ yesterday.
Photos show a enormous, charred rock smoldering on the grass, with a trail of earth scorched black behind it. They have collected more than 2,000 comments and more than 2,400 shares on the social media platform.
“We’ve had all sorts of inquiries from all around the world, including NASA who asked us to make a report to the Kennedy Space Centre,” Malanda State School principal Mark Allen told 7 News.
However, as it turned out, the ‘meteorite’ was absolutely nothing more than a college project.
The school’s journalism students had been tasked with reporting on the ‘meteorite’ landing, interviewing witnesses and speaking to emergency personnel as element of the assignment.
“The local police loved to get involved for the school and the kids to make it more realistic,” a regional resident was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. “This is a small town, they didn’t expect it (school project) to go viral.”