On a Saturday afternoon in late spring, the sky over New England caught fire in broad daylight. A meteor about three feet wide fell through the atmosphere at 75,000 miles per hour. It burned brighter than the sun before breaking apart 40 miles above the ground, near the Massachusetts and New Hampshire border, north of Boston. The energy released was equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, according to NASA.
The sound arrived a few minutes later. Because the meteor was faster than sound, pressure waves took time to reach the ground. People across Massachusetts and Rhode Island heard a loud boom and felt their homes shake. Many thought it was an earthquake, but the U.S. Geological Survey found nothing on their seismographs because sonic booms travel through air, not underground.
NASA confirmed the boom came from a bolide, a very bright fireball that explodes as it falls. The agency was able to follow the fragments using satellite data, radar, and ground sensors. The NOAA weather satellite GOES-19 detected the meteor's brilliant flash, even though it was designed to detect lightning.
NASA reconstructed the object's path and discovered that after breaking apart, the pieces scattered into Cape Cod Bay. The fragments landed in water about 111 feet deep, near the middle of the bay. No pieces hit land.
Most meteorites are rich in iron and attracted to magnets, which means they could theoretically be recovered. NASA said the pieces are within reach of a 100-foot rope from a boat. However, pulling space rocks from more than 100 feet of ocean water is extremely difficult and rarely successful. The meteorite now sits silently at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, waiting at the end of an imaginary rope that probably no one will ever lower.