WASHINGTON: A meteor crashing toward Earth exploded over the northeastern United States on Saturday, NASA said, setting off booms that echoed over the region with a blast equivalent to 300 tonnes of TNT.
NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel said the meteor was traveling at about 75,000 mph (120,700 kph) and likely fragmented about 40 miles (60 kilometers) above the ground. The agency estimated that the energy released when it broke up was equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, accounting for the booms.
The fireball broke up over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire at 2:06 p.m. (1806 GMT), the US space agency’s deputy news chief Jennifer Dooren said in a statement.
“This fireball was not associated with any currently active meteor shower, but it was a natural object and not a re-entry of space debris or a satellite,” she said.
Area residents were alarmed by the unexpected loud booms, with social media users reporting they were so powerful that houses were shaking.
Reports of the explosion from people across New England sent police agencies and others scrambling to understand what caused a double boom that shook buildings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The American Meteor Society said that the booms people heard were actually caused by a meteor about 3 feet (nearly 1 meter) wide entering the atmosphere around the New Hampshire border with Massachusetts, north of Boston.
NASA officials confirmed that the meteor was natural material, not a satellite or space debris.
American Meteor Society program monitor Robert Lunsford said the group received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal with people either hearing the double boom, feeling the ground shake or seeing the fireball — which he said looked like a shooting star in the daytime sky.
“It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a yard wide,” he said.
But Lunsford said it was unlikely the meteor struck the ground.
“We would need more information about the trajectory the speed and other aspects to know for sure if it hit the ground, but if it didn’t burn up, then it would have landed in the ocean,” he said. “Most of them do burn up before they hit the ground.”
People in a handful of states posted on social media about feeling the buildings they were in shaking. Several videos on the X platform captured what sounded like two quick booms, with no fire, smoke or other visual causes.
Several people filed reports with the US Geological Survey, registering the shaking they felt with the National Earthquake Information Center, agency spokesman Steve Sobie confirmed.
The agency opened an event page, based on the number of “Did you feel it?” reports it received on its website. But Sobie said there was no event registered on the agency’s seismographs. meaning the shaking was not due to an earthquake.
