A meteorite on a collision course with Earth exploded over the northeastern United States , causing booms that echoed across the region with a blast equivalent to 300 tons of TNT, NASA said.
The fireball disintegrated over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire at 2:06 p.m. (8:06 p.m. CET), Jennifer Dooren, deputy communications officer for the US space agency, said in a statement to AFP.
"This fireball was not associated with any currently active meteor shower, but was a natural object and not the reentry of space debris or a satellite," he said. "The energy released upon disintegration is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which explains the loud booms."
The meteor was traveling at 75,000 miles per hour (over 120,000 km/h) at an altitude of 40 miles when it disintegrated, Dooren added. Local residents were alarmed by the unexpectedly loud booms, and social media users reported that they were so powerful they shook houses. In 2013, a fireball ripped through the skies of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The asteroid, the size of a house, exploded 22 kilometers (14 miles) into the air, releasing a shock wave equivalent to 440,000 tons of TNT, according to NASA.
The explosion shattered glass in an area of more than 518 square kilometers, injuring more than 1,600 people, mostly from flying glass.
(Unioneonline)
