Meteorite that landed in Cape Cod was a 'lone wolf' from the outer solar system, scientists find

Thanks to a combination of radar, infrasound, dash-cam and security camera footage, astronomers have tracked the bright daytime meteor that fell over Cape Cod Bay in May 2026 back to its origin as a small asteroid perturbed by Jupiter and sent on a comet-like orbit towards Earth.

Meteor fireballs visible in the daytime are referred to as 'bolides'. At 1:06 p.m. local time (18:06 UTC) on May 30, 2026 one such bolide was widely witnessed falling out of the sky over coastal Massachusetts, with members of the public also reporting an associated sonic boom that rumbled across the north-eastern coast of the United States.

Now, a team of scientists from Europe and the United States, led by space physicist Juha Vierinen of the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, have patched together measurements from a meteor-observing radar network, regular weather radar, infrasound stations and camera footage to fully characterize the fall of this meteoroid and trace its orbit around the Read Entire Article