{"id":705708,"date":"2026-05-31T05:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T05:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/705708\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T05:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T05:35:10","slug":"meteor-explodes-over-us-with-blast-equivalent-to-300-tons-of-tnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/705708\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteor explodes over US with blast equivalent to 300 tons of TNT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 tons of TNT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fireball broke up over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire at 2:06 pm (1806 GMT), the US space agency\u2019s deputy news chief Jennifer Dooren told AFP in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which accounts for the loud booms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The meteor was traveling at 75,000 mph (more than 120,000 kph) at an altitude of 40 miles when it broke apart, Dooren said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Area residents were alarmed by the unexpected loud booms, with social media users reporting they were so powerful that houses were shaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A meteor crashing toward Earth exploded over the northeastern United States on Saturday, NASA said, setting off booms&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,3389,210250,128],"class_list":["post-705708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}