Meteorite Hits House in Houston After Texas Fireball Event | Discover Magazine OR Houston Meteor: Rock Crashes Through Roof After Texas Fireball

A homeowner in Spring, Texas, had a startling encounter Saturday afternoon when a rock crashed through her ceiling, following a confirmed meteor explosion over the Houston area. NASA reported the event, which generated sonic booms heard across a wide swath of southeast Texas, from Cypress to Katy and as far as Dallas-Fort Worth.

Sherrie James, the Spring resident, told KHOU 11 that her grandson discovered the hole in the ceiling and the rock after a loud boom shook the house. “My grandson went to check and said there was a hole in the ceiling… then I saw the rock, and I thought, ‘that looks like a meteor,’” James said. Local fire crews initially investigated the possibility the object had fallen from an aircraft before learning of the confirmed meteor event.

According to NASA, the meteoroid, estimated to be approximately three feet in diameter and weighing one ton, entered the Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 35,000 miles per hour. It became visible around 4:40 p.m. CDT approximately 49 miles above Stagecoach, northwest of Houston, before breaking apart about 29 miles above Bammel, west of Cypress Station. The fragmentation released energy equivalent to 26 tons of TNT.

The agency’s radar analysis suggests that fragments may have reached the ground in a corridor between Willowbrook and Northgate Crossing. While most of the meteoroid vaporized during atmospheric entry, some debris likely survived as meteorites. NASA tracked the meteor’s path using a combination of sensors and radar, and lightning-mapping instruments aboard NOAA’s GOES satellites also detected the event.

No injuries have been reported. James stated she is “very excited to receive this, but a little scared,” and intends to keep the object. It has not yet been confirmed by a laboratory whether the rock is extraterrestrial in origin, but officials are describing it as a possible meteorite.

Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, is located at 1601 E NASA Pkwy, Houston, TX 77058 and remains open with regular hours of 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM Tuesday through Thursday, and 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on weekends. The center did not issue a statement regarding the meteor event as of Tuesday, March 24, 2026.