A suspected meteorite crashed into a home in Houston, Texas, on Saturday evening, surprising residents and prompting an official response.
People across the northern parts of the city reported seeing a bright fireball in the sky. Many also heard loud, thunder-like booms, even though the weather was clear.
Sherrie James, who lives in the Spring area, said the object appeared to fall through her house. “My grandson checked and told me there was a hole in the ceiling. Then I saw the rock and thought it looked like a meteor,” she said.
She quickly informed the local fire department. At first, officials considered that the object might have fallen from an aircraft. But later, they linked the incident to a meteor event reported in the same area.
READ ALSO: China’s Automakers Race to Put Solid-State EV Batteries With 800+ Mile Range on Roads
The US space agency NASA confirmed that a meteor was seen over north-west Houston at around 4:40 pm local time. It became visible about 49 miles above the ground and moved southeast at an extremely high speed.
According to NASA, the object broke apart in midair at an altitude of about 29 miles. The meteor was estimated to weigh about 1 ton and to measure nearly 3 feet in diameter.
“The meteor fragmented in the sky, and the pressure wave created loud booms heard by people nearby,” NASA said in its statement.
WATCH ALSO: U.S. lab advances demo microreactor as Project Pele gets nuclear fuel
Weather radar also detected possible meteorite fragments falling between areas like Willowbrook and Northgate Crossing.
Residents described the moment as unusual and frightening. Wendy Camardelle Heppner from Bridgeland said, “It sounded like thunder, but the sky was completely clear.” Another resident, Shylie Troquille from Dickinson, said she saw “a small ball of fire that disappeared quickly.”
This incident comes shortly after a similar event in Ohio, where a meteor caused a powerful sonic boom heard across multiple states.
READ ALSO: UF Builds First Liquid 550-Pound Rocket Engine, Achieves Historic Hot-fire Success
In another recent case, a small meteorite crashed through a home in Atlanta in 2025. Scientists later confirmed it was billions of years old.
Experts say such events are rare, but small space rocks do enter Earth’s atmosphere from time to time. Most burn up before reaching the ground, but some fragments can survive and fall as meteorites.
