{"id":453558,"date":"2026-05-31T03:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T03:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453558\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T03:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T03:43:08","slug":"meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-setting-off-loud-booms-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453558\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteor explodes over Massachusetts, setting off loud booms | Nasa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A meteor crashing toward Earth exploded over the north-eastern United States on Saturday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/nasa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nasa<\/a> said, setting off booms that echoed over the region with a blast equivalent to 300 tons of TNT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The fireball broke up over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire just after 2pm (1806 GMT), the US space agency\u2019s deputy news chief Jennifer Dooren told AFP in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Satellite imagery of the meteor exploding. Composite: NOAA Satellite and Information Service<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\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=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\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=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The meteor was travelling at 75,000 miles per hour (more than 120,000 km\/h) at an altitude of 40 miles when it broke apart, Dooren said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">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 north-eastern United States on Saturday, Nasa said, setting off booms&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-453558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}