Washington, May 31 (SANA) A meteor exploded high above the northeastern United States on Saturday, generating shock waves that rattled buildings and produced loud booms heard across several states, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel said the meteor was traveling at about 120,700 kilometers per hour before disintegrating at an altitude of roughly 60 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.
The explosion released energy equivalent to approximately 300 tons of TNT, helping explain reports of loud blasts and ground shaking across the region, Beutel said.
He described the object as a natural space rock about one meter in diameter rather than human-made space debris. Any surviving fragments were unlikely to have reached land and would most likely have fallen into the Atlantic Ocean, he added.
The American Meteor Society said it received dozens of eyewitness reports from an area stretching from Delaware to Montreal, Canada. Witnesses reported seeing a bright fireball crossing the daytime sky, hearing explosive sounds and feeling vibrations.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it received multiple reports of shaking but detected no seismic activity, indicating the vibrations were caused by atmospheric shock waves generated by the meteor’s breakup.
Scientists say small meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere regularly, with most burning up at high altitudes due to friction before reaching the ground.
The event drew comparisons with the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia, when a much larger object exploded in the atmosphere, creating a powerful shock wave that damaged thousands of buildings and injured about 1,500 people.
R.H/Abd
