NASA Confirms a Meteorite Hit the Ground in Maine on Saturday

People in parts of Maine saw a bright flash in the sky and heard a sonic boom which turned out to be a meteorite hitting the ground. This is the first meteorite fall seen in Maine that has shown up on radar.

What exactly is a meteorite? According to Wikipedia it's a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid in outer space, and doesn't burn up in the atmosphere, reaching the surface of a planet or moon.

When they enter the atmosphere they create a big flash of light and are commonly followed by a sonic boom.

NASA reported that the meteorite fell at 11:56 a.m. on Saturday, April 8 near Calais, Maine. Witnesses reported seeing a fireball in the sky followed by a sonic boom.

It was caught on radar at the National Weather Service in Houlton and NASA provided this map to show where it was picked up. You can see where Calais is located in relation to the radar date in the lower right corner.

The amazing thing about this is that NASA calculated the mass of the meteorite at between 1.59 grams and  322 grams. If you convert that to pounds, this meteorite weighed between 0.003 and 0.7 pounds. That just shows you how something so small traveling through the atmosphere at that speed, can create such a fireball.

NASA also reported that it fell into winds of about 100 mph which send some smaller meteorites into Canada.

This is where NASA believes the meteorite hit the ground.

There's probably not much there other than some very small pieces of debris and it would be super hard to find over such a large aream but good luck if you feel like metorite hunting.