A meteor explosion over Cleveland, Ohio, caused disruption across several US states on 17 March 2026, producing a shockwave equivalent to 250 tonnes of TNT. NASA did not detect the object before it entered the Earth's atmosphere because it was too small to be tracked by current monitoring systems. The event has raised questions about the limits of global space surveillance.
According to NASA event data, the object measured around two metres in diameter and weighed approximately seven tonnes, which is well below the size threshold for long-range detection. Systems designed to monitor near-Earth objects are focused on significantly larger asteroids that could pose a regional or global threat.
