{"id":639917,"date":"2026-10-24T10:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T10:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639917\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T10:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T10:54:19","slug":"likely-origins-of-cape-cod-bay-meteorite-revealed-in-new-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639917\/","title":{"rendered":"Likely origins of Cape Cod Bay meteorite revealed in new report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember that meteorite<\/a> that landed in Cape Cod Bay<\/a> back in the spring? Well, a group of researchers<\/a> have been hard at work trying to piece together exactly what happened in the skies over Massachusetts back on May 30.<\/p>\n

It is indeed a rare event to have a “superbolide” (a very bright fireball\/meteor that typically explodes in the atmosphere) literally explode right over our heads and then actually make landfall.<\/p>\n

Some local residents actually caught a glimpse of the fireball<\/a> while thousands of others heard the sonic boom.<\/p>\n

You could say the scientists got lucky with this one, occurring in a densely populated area. It was captured by a wide array of sensors, dashcam and security video, four weather radars and, most importantly, the MIT Haystack Observatory<\/a> specular radar located in Westford.<\/p>\n

Researchers were able to combine all these measurements to reconstruct the path of the meteor, the energy release and finally, the “landing field.”<\/p>\n

What they discovered was truly fascinating.<\/p>\n

Composition: Evidence is consistent with a “dense, mechanically strong meteoroid, possibly iron-rich.”<\/p>\n

Origin: The belief is that the meteor originated as a “main-belt asteroidal fragment” (from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter).<\/p>\n

However, more recently, it likely was part of the “Jupiter-family-comet-like orbits.” In other words, it came from a much more distant place in our solar system, as shown in this diagram.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot-20261023-120035.png<\/p>\n

The orbit of the Cape Cod meteor<\/p>\n

Juha Vierinen\/The Astronomical Journal<\/p>\n

They also concluded that there was no “parent body or meteor shower association,” meaning it was a lone wolf.<\/p>\n

Sonic boom: Researchers estimate that the meteorite exploded about 21 miles above our heads with a force somewhere near 500 tons of TNT.<\/p>\n

Landing zone: Finally, the researchers verified that the landing zone was somewhere in Cape Cod Bay and likely in several small fragments.<\/a><\/p>\n

Comparison: They say that this meteorite’s impact energy was comparable to the 2008 impact over Sudan<\/a> and about one quarter of the 2012 meteor explosion that occurred over California and Nevada, otherwise known as “The Sutter’s Mill meteor.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, they added only three recorded events in all of 2025 had impact energies that exceeded the Cape Cod meteorite.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember that meteorite that landed in Cape Cod Bay back in the spring? Well, a group of researchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61628,111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-639917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-cape-cod","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639917","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=639917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}