A Meteorite Tore Through a Georgia Home’s Roof. It Turns Out the Space Rock Is Older Than Our Planet

A planetary geologist finds that the meteorite, which fell in June, came from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

August 11, 2025

Fragments of the McDonough Meteorite. — Fragments of the McDonough Meteorite, which fell through the roof of a home in Georgia in June Cade Massey

On June 26, more than 200 people reported seeing a fireball flash through the daytime sky over the southeastern United States. Others simply heard it—the meteor generated a sonic boom that several people mistook for an earthquake, according to the U.S. National Weather Service Peachtree City Georgia.

But that was no earthquake. It was a space rock—and a cherry tomato-sized piece of it crashed through a roof near Atlanta. Now, that meteorite has a name: It’s the McDonough Meteorite, as reported in a statement by the University of Georgia.

Brenda Eckard from Gilbert, South Carolina, told CNN’s Devon Sayers, Brandon Miller and Zenebou Sylla in June that she was driving home when she saw the meteor, which she thought looked similar to a firework.

“When [space rocks] encounter Earth, our atmosphere is very good at slowing them down,” University of Georgia planetary geologist Scott Harris says in the statement. “But you’re talking about something that is double the size of a 50-caliber shell, going at least 1 kilometer per second. That’s like running ten football fields in one second.”

Key concept: Meteoroids, meteors and meteorites

Meteoroids are rocks traveling through space. Meteoroids become meteors when they enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, and meteors become meteorites if they reach Earth’s surface.

Eckard then called her husband to make sure their house hadn’t been damaged, per CNN. While their house was, presumably, fine, the McDonough Meteorite tore straight through a home in McDonough, Georgia. The affected homeowner has chosen to remain anonymous, according to the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas.

Harris investigated the incident. He found that the homeowners “knew about the hole in the roof, but they didn’t know it went through the air duct—through one side of the air duct, out the other side of the air duct, through a couple of feet of insulation, then through the ceiling,” Harris tells Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson. “And then it went the distance from there to the floor and left about a centimeter-and-a-half little crater in the floor.”

While part of the meteorite was pulverized upon impact, the University of Georgia received 23 grams of the 50 grams of fragmented space rock recovered from the house. Harris conducted an analysis of the rock, which indicated the meteorite is an ordinary chondrite, a stony type of meteorite that’s the most common among all recovered space rocks.

The low metal meteorite probably formed around 4.56 billion years ago in the presence of oxygen, per the statement. That means the fragments are about 20 million years older than Earth, which researchers estimate to be about 4.54 billion years old.

Furthermore, “it belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,” Harris explains in the statement. “But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth’s orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time.”

the dent left by the meteorite in the homeowner's floor — The meteorite left a dent in the homeowner's floor. Submitted to University of Georgia

The McDonough Meteorite seems to have caused limited damage, but Harris nevertheless plans to publish a study on the space rock’s composition, speed and dynamics, which can provide insight into the potential danger of larger asteroids.

After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that the odds of 2024 YR4 hitting Earth reached a 3.1 percent chance before thankfully dropping back down to zero. It’s been a big year for meteorites in other ways, too. In January, a home security camera in Canada caught what’s likely the first known visual and audio recording of a meteorite hitting Earth.

“No one’s got to do anything about a small object like this coming through the atmosphere,” Harris says to Fox News Digital, referring to the McDonough Meteorite, but “even the dynamics of the small pieces are important for ultimately understanding where the bigger ones are and what the risks are for us in the future.”

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