A 5,600-Pound Iron Meteorite Just Fell Into Cape Cod Bay

If you were anywhere near New England on the afternoon of May 30, 2026, you may have seen it: a bright fireball crossing the sky at 2:06 p.m. EDT, moving at roughly 42,000 miles per hour. NASA's meteorite tracking program confirmed it as a genuine meteorite fall — and a big one.

The object was estimated at about 5 feet across with a mass of 5.6 metric tons entering the atmosphere, breaking apart in a daytime bolide event over Cape Cod Bay. Researchers who modeled the debris field independently confirmed, using separate data, that this was an iron meteorite fall. Dark-flight modeling estimated that of the total fall mass, roughly 130 kilograms of fragments would be large enough (over 1 gram) to potentially be recovered — though most of the debris field lies underwater in the bay itself, making recovery considerably more difficult than a land fall.

Iron meteorites like this one are fragments of the metallic cores of long-destroyed asteroids — objects that were once molten planetary building blocks, differentiated into a dense iron-nickel core, before a collision billions of years ago shattered the parent body and sent pieces drifting through the solar system until one, eventually, found New England.

Own a piece of space rock yourself — browse our meteorite specimens.

Source: NASA Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES), 2026.

Written by Nic Scogna, a photographer and mineral collector based in Lexington, Kentucky, and the founder of Crystal Earth Gallery and Kyanite King Minerals. For over 25 years, he has traveled to mineral localities across the U.S. — from Maine to California — personally sourcing the specimens, gemstones, and photographic subjects featured here. When not out in the field, Nic writes about mineralogy, collecting, and the craft of turning raw stone into wearable art.