Article #39325

Meteor was travelling at 75,000 miles per hour (more than 120,000 km/h) at an altitude of 40 miles when it broke apart

A meteor crashing toward Earth exploded over the north-eastern United States on Saturday, Nasa said, setting off booms that echoed over the region with a blast equivalent to 300 tons of TNT.

The fireball broke up over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire just after 2pm (1806 GMT), the US space agency’s deputy news chief Jennifer Dooren told AFP in a statement.