NASA ties Northeast fireball and boom to Cape Cod Bay meteorite fall
Witnesses from Delaware to Montreal reported a midday boom and flash, and NASA later traced it to a meteor that fell into Cape Cod Bay.
A sudden daytime boom and flash over the Northeast set off a wave of witness reports from Delaware to Montreal before scientists pinned the event to a meteor that broke apart over New England and fell into Cape Cod Bay. The incident showed how quickly a bright sky event can move from public confusion to a precise scientific reconstruction.
The American Meteor Society said it received dozens of reports from across the region, and its fireball logs placed the May 30 event among its major 2026 fireballs, with 85 reports in the Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland and Maine grouping. Robert Lunsford, the society’s editor, said the object was about 3 feet wide when it entered the atmosphere near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border north of Boston. That breadth of reporting, stretching from the Mid-Atlantic into Canada, gave investigators a dense real-time map of where the flash and boom were seen and heard.
NASA later said the fireball crossed New England at 2:06 p.m. EDT on May 30 at about 42,000 mph. The agency estimated the object at roughly 5 feet, or 1.6 meters, across and 5.6 metric tons in mass. It broke up about 31 miles above sea level with energy equivalent to about 230 tons of TNT, and NASA’s modeling placed the fall site in Cape Cod Bay at coordinates 41.87754, -70.35239, in water about 34 meters deep.
The reconstruction was supported by radar signatures on four systems: KBOX in Boston, TBOS at Boston Logan airport, KOKX on Long Island, and KENX in Albany, with a possible additional signature at KGYX in Portland, Maine. NASA said the entry angle was steep and the object fragmented at about 50 kilometers altitude, details that fit a natural meteoroid rather than a satellite or other piece of space debris.
The U.S. Geological Survey said wide-area boom reports paired with bright-light sightings can point to an atmospheric source such as a bolide or sonic boom, not an earthquake. That distinction mattered as reports piled up across state lines and into Quebec, turning one fireball into a fast-moving test of how the public, the American Meteor Society and federal scientists sort a sky mystery before rumor outruns evidence.
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