The meteor streaked through the night sky over Vermont on Sunday, March 7, creating a light show and setting off explosions that shook the Earth as it burned the atmosphere.
The meteor was the size of a bowling ball but exploded with the force of 200 kilograms in the United States late Sunday night.
The asteroid’s explosive passage through the atmosphere released the equivalent of 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of TNT, suggesting that the meteor was likely 10 pounds 6 inches (15 centimeters) in diameter, according to NASA.
The space rock crashed into the atmosphere at about 42,000 miles per hour, NASA reported, and appeared over the northern part of the state as a bright fireball at 5:38 p.m., just before sunset.
A local news station reported calls from across the state after the event, and Vermont residents described a “loud roar and body rattling vibration” as the meteor passed overhead.
According to eyewitness accounts, NASA estimates that the fireball first appeared 84 kilometers above Mount Mansfield State Forest, east of Burlington, the largest city in the state.
It then advanced 53 kilometers northeast toward the Canadian border, disappearing 33 miles above the ground south of the city of Newport.
According to NASA, the shock wave was the result of the meteorite breaking due to atmospheric pressure.
As the bowling ball-sized chunk of a larger parent asteroid moved at nearly 55 times the speed of sound through the atmosphere, pressure built in front of it and a vacuum formed behind it. Finally, the stress of that differential caused the rock to explode.