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Imagine a chilled Saturday afternoon, when suddenly a shudder in your living room becomes a house-shaking roar before seeing an actual meteor zoom across the sky. Well that's what happened to residents in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as NASA has confirmed that a space rock exploded in a ‘house shaking’ blast over the weekend.
On Saturday (May 30), a meteor crashed down onto Earth and it resulted in a loud boom being heard in the US.
NASA shared an update on the event, stating that ‘evidence suggests this fall entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a steep angle and fragmented at relatively high altitude (~50 km) as discerned by the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center’.
NASA modeled the fall using Jormungandr2 dark flight model. This uses the physics of falling objects and NOAA weather balloon data to accurately model the landing sites of meteorites from the event.
This showed that the meteor landed just off the coast of Massachusetts in Cape Cod Bay, unleashing a blast that was the equivalent to around 300 tons of TNT.
No injuries have been reported as a result of the meteor crash.
In a social media post published by NASA, the space agency shared that the meteor ‘was about 5 feet (1.6 meters) in diameter with a mass of 5.6 metric tons’.
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In a separate post on X, formerly Twitter, NASA explained: “The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH.”
The agency added: “Eyewitnesses in New England and @NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite reported a bright fireball on Saturday, May 30, at 2:06 p.m EDT accompanied by a loud noise.”
NASA has also confirmed the speed at which the meteor was traveling as it hurtled its way down to Earth.
The agency reported that the space rock entered Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 42,000 mph.
In a post, NASA went on to state: “The meteor traveled through the atmosphere from northwest to southeast for 26 miles before breaking up at an altitude of 31 miles and producing a meteorite fall into Cape Cod Bay.”
Many people have taken to the X comment section to share their own reactions to the news, with one user writing: “It was so small and exploded so powerfully, it’s scary to imagine if it was the size of a 9-story building.”
Another said: “So this can just happen any time, randomly? And the American people are supposed to just accept that?”
And a third person joked: “Even a meteor couldn’t handle living in Massachusetts.”
