Residents of Colorado and Wyoming got a start early Thursday morning, January 4 as the remnants of a Russian Soyuz 2-1b rocket re-entered the atmosphere and broke up high above the countryside.

NORAD spokesman Sean Kelly told the Associated Press that the agency was trying to confirm reports that a piece of the rocket may have hit the ground near Riverton, Wyo., at about 6 a.m.

The rocket, made in Russia, was launched from Kazakhstan on December 27, carrying the European Space Agency’s COROT space observatory into orbit.

Flying high above the Earth’s atmosphere, the Convection Rotation and planetary Transits (COROT) satellite will look for smaller, rocky extrasolar planets beyond our solar system.

“Objects falling from space are almost an everyday occurrence,” Kelly told the AP. And he is correct. Earlier in the day and further east, a metal object, believed to be a meteor, crashed into a house in Freehold Township, NJ. Thankfully, no one was injured by either event.

Watch the cool video of the rocket re-entry here.