B737-300 captain reported an unidentified foreign object impacted his windshield; shattering the top...

Narrative:

During cruise at FL350 something impacted the aircraft shattering the outer pain (LW1) of the windscreen on the captain's side of the cockpit. I saw a brief shadow of something above the airplane an instant before it hit the aircraft. We accomplished the QRH items for windshield damage. The pressurization was normal and I still had adequate visibility through the bottom half of the windscreen. No other abnormalities were noted at the time. We notified ATC that we had a broken windscreen and that everything else seemed to be normal. The controller asked us if we needed any assistance and we said no; but requested to slow to mach 0.70. We then notified dispatch via ACARS and told them of our status and asked them to coordinate with maintenance control to see if they had any other suggestions. Maintenance agreed that we had done all we could and dispatch gave us a weather update for our destination and also for [several other nearby airports] should we need to divert if the condition worsened. We flew a slower than normal descent into our destination but other than that; the arrival and landing were without incident. I don't know if any other aircraft were in our vicinity above us or if weather balloons were in the area.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737-300 Captain reported an unidentified foreign object impacted his windshield; shattering the top half. They slowed to Mach .70 and landed safely at destination.

Narrative: During cruise at FL350 something impacted the aircraft shattering the outer pain (LW1) of the windscreen on the Captain's side of the cockpit. I saw a brief shadow of something above the airplane an instant before it hit the aircraft. We accomplished the QRH items for windshield damage. The pressurization was normal and I still had adequate visibility through the bottom half of the windscreen. No other abnormalities were noted at the time. We notified ATC that we had a broken windscreen and that everything else seemed to be normal. The Controller asked us if we needed any assistance and we said no; but requested to slow to Mach 0.70. We then notified Dispatch via ACARS and told them of our status and asked them to coordinate with Maintenance Control to see if they had any other suggestions. Maintenance agreed that we had done all we could and Dispatch gave us a weather update for our destination and also for [several other nearby airports] should we need to divert if the condition worsened. We flew a slower than normal descent into our destination but other than that; the arrival and landing were without incident. I don't know if any other aircraft were in our vicinity above us or if weather balloons were in the area.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1034367
Time
Date	201209
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B737-300
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Cockpit Window
Person 1
Function	Captain
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 214
Events
Anomaly	Inflight Event / Encounter Object

B737-300 captain reported an unidentified foreign object impacted his windshield; shattering the top half. They slowed to mach .70 and landed safely at destination.