{"id":218732,"date":"2026-03-24T22:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/218732\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T22:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:14:23","slug":"nasa-confirms-1-ton-fireball-spotted-over-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/218732\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA confirms 1-ton fireball spotted over Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bright, fiery object seen and heard across Texas on Saturday afternoon was a one-ton meteor<\/a>, NASA confirmed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A map posted by the agency indicates the meteor most likely broke apart over the Houston area, first spotted northwest of Houston around 4:40 p.m. traveling southwest at 35,000 miles per hour. NASA estimates it was around three feet in diameter before fracturing and released the same amount of energy as 26 tons of TNT.<\/p>\n

A woman who lives near Cypress Station told local media<\/a> that her family heard the meteor before discovering a piece of it had crashed through the roof of their home.<\/p>\n

\u201c’What was that? What is that?’\u201d Sherrie James recalled saying. \u201cBecause it was so loud. It was like a boom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I come out here and look. There\u2019s a hole in the ceiling, big dent in the floor, another little piece in the ceiling, and a big rock on the floor, and it just scared me to death,\u201d James said. \u201cI said, ‘Everybody, back out, get out of the room.’ I said, ‘I don\u2019t know what this is, but this might be a meteor.’ I said, ‘I don\u2019t know.’ First thing I did was call the fire department.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the fragment was roughly the size of a baseball, James reports it felt heavier. It was also \u201call black.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just looked like a rock, and ain\u2019t no rocks got no business falling out of the sky,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s event prompted over 170 reports<\/a> to the American Meteor Society from south-central and southeastern Texas\u00a0\u2014 including Houston, Katy, College Station, San Antonio and Austin.<\/p>\n

Just four days before the Texas event, a larger meteor<\/a> was seen across at least 10 states before landing in northeast Ohio. NASA estimates the meteor, which caused a loud, booming sound near Cleveland, was about six feet in diameter and weighed roughly seven tons. Traveling at 45,000 miles per hour, it released energy equivalent to 250 tons on TNT.<\/p>\n

While several meteor fragments have been found in Medina County, there have been no reports of damage to homes.<\/p>\n

In February, while speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Phoenix, planetary defense officer Kelly Fast warned that\u00a0thousands of near-Earth asteroids<\/a> capable of destroying a city have yet to be detected\u00a0\u2014 and humanity currently has limited protection against them.<\/p>\n

Fast said that small asteroids strike Earth frequently, so they\u2019re not a major concern. She added that scientists are also less worried about the massive, movie-style asteroids because their locations are already known. But the \u201cin-between\u201d ones\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s \u201cwhat keeps [her] up at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s estimated there are about 25,000 of those, and we\u2019re only about 40 percent of the way through,\u201d Fast said. \u201cIt takes time to find them, even with the best telescopes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bright, fiery object seen and heard across Texas on Saturday afternoon was a one-ton meteor, NASA confirmed.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7151,56,58,57,1911,7152,27],"class_list":["post-218732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-astronomy","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-nasa","tag-space-phenomena","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}