The Chelyabinsk meteor was a
superbolide that entered
Earth's atmosphere
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...
over the southern
Ural region
Ural (russian: Урал) is a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It is considered a part of Eurasian Steppe, extending approximately from the North to the South; from the A ...
in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20
YEKT (03:20
UTC). It was caused by an approximately
near-Earth asteroid that entered the atmosphere at a shallow 18.3 ± 0.4 degree angle with a speed relative to Earth of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometres per second (69,000 km/h or 42,690 mph).
The light from the meteor was briefly brighter than the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
, visible up to away. It was observed over a wide area of the region and in neighbouring republics. Some eyewitnesses also felt intense heat from the fireball.
The object exploded in a
meteor air burst
A meteor air burst is a type of air burst in which a meteor explodes after entering a planetary body's atmosphere. This fate leads them to be called fireballs or bolides, with the brightest air bursts known as superbolides. Such meteoroids were ...
over
Chelyabinsk Oblast
Chelyabinsk Oblast (russian: Челя́бинская о́бласть, ''Chelyabinskaya oblast'') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the city ...
, at a height of around .
The explosion generated a bright flash, producing a hot cloud of dust and gas that penetrated to , and many surviving small fragmentary
meteorite
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...
s. The bulk of the object's energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, creating a large
shock wave
In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a med ...
with a total
kinetic energy
In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion.
It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its accele ...
before atmospheric impact estimated from
infrasound
Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low status sound, describes sound waves with a frequency below the lower limit of human audibility (generally 20 Hz). Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perce ...
and
seismic
Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...
measurements to be equivalent to the blast yield of 400–500
kiloton
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a t ...
s of TNT (about 1.4–1.8 PJ) range – 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the
atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima,
[best estimate of the equivalent nuclear blast yield of the Chelyabinsk explosion] and the rough equivalent in energy output to the former Soviet Union's own
mid-August 1953 initial attempt at a thermonuclear device.
The object approached Earth undetected before its
atmospheric entry
Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the ent ...
, in part because its
radiant (source direction) was close to the Sun. Its explosion created panic among local residents, and about 1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide's flash. Some 7,200 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion's shock wave, and authorities scrambled to help repair the structures in sub-freezing temperatures.
With an estimated initial mass of about 12,000–13,000
tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s
(13,000–14,000
short ton
The short ton (symbol tn) is a measurement unit equal to . It is commonly used in the United States, where it is known simply as a ton,
although the term is ambiguous, the single word being variously used for short, long, and metric ton.
The vari ...
s), and measuring about in diameter, it is the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908
Tunguska event
The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12-megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 30, ...
, which destroyed a wide, remote, forested, and very sparsely populated area of
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
. The Chelyabinsk meteor is also the only meteor confirmed to have resulted in many injuries. No deaths were reported.
The earlier-predicted and well-publicized
close approach of a larger asteroid on the same day, the roughly
367943 Duende, occurred about 16 hours later; the very different orbits of the two objects showed they were unrelated to each other.
Initial reports
![Tunguska_and_Chelyabinsk_meteoroid_size](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Tunguska_and_Chelyabinsk_meteoroid_size.png)
Local residents witnessed extremely bright burning objects in the sky in
Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk ( rus, Челя́бинск, p=tɕɪˈlʲæbʲɪnsk, a=Ru-Chelyabinsk.ogg; ba, Силәбе, ''Siläbe'') is the administrative center and largest city of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the seventh-largest city in Russia, with a ...
,
Kurgan
A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asi ...
,
Sverdlovsk,
Tyumen
Tyumen ( ; rus, Тюмень, p=tʲʉˈmʲenʲ, a=Ru-Tyumen.ogg) is the administrative center and largest city of Tyumen Oblast, Russia. It is situated just east of the Ural Mountains, along the Tura River. Fueled by the Russian oil and gas indu ...
, and
Orenburg Oblast
Orenburg Oblast (russian: Оренбургская область, ''Orenburgskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Orenburg. From 1938 to 1957, it bore the name ''Chkalov Oblast'' () ...
s, the
Republic of Bashkortostan
The Republic of Bashkortostan or Bashkortostan ( ba, Башҡортостан Республикаһы, Bashqortostan Respublikahy; russian: Республика Башкортостан, Respublika Bashkortostan),; russian: Респу́блик ...
, and in neighbouring regions in
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
,
when the asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere over Russia.
Amateur videos showed a fireball streaking across the sky and a loud boom several minutes afterwards.
Some eyewitnesses claim they felt intense heat from the fireball.
The event began at 09:20:21 Yekaterinburg time,
several minutes after sunrise in Chelyabinsk, and minutes before sunrise in Yekaterinburg. According to eyewitnesses, the
bolide
A bolide is normally taken to mean an exceptionally bright meteor, but the term is subject to more than one definition, according to context. It may refer to any large crater-forming body, or to one that explodes in the atmosphere. It can be a ...
appeared brighter than the sun,
as was later confirmed by NASA.
An image of the object was also taken shortly after it entered the atmosphere by the weather satellite
Meteosat
The Meteosat series of satellites are geostationary meteorological satellites operated by EUMETSAT under the Meteosat Transition Programme (MTP) and the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) program.
The MTP program was established to ensure the ope ...
9. Witnesses in Chelyabinsk said that the air of the city smelled like "gunpowder", "
sulfur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
" and "burning odors" starting about 1 hour after the fireball and lasting all day.
Atmospheric entry
![Meteoroid - Meteor (Bolide) - Meteorite](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Meteoroid_-_Meteor_%28Bolide%29_-_Meteorite.gif)
The visible phenomenon due to the passage of an
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
or
meteoroid
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as micr ...
through the atmosphere is called a
meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as micr ...
.
If the object reaches the ground, then it is called a
meteorite
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...
. During the Chelyabinsk meteoroid's traversal, there was a bright object trailing smoke, then an
air burst (explosion) that caused a powerful
blast wave
In fluid dynamics, a blast wave is the increased pressure and flow resulting from the deposition of a large amount of energy in a small, very localised volume. The flow field can be approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a self-similar sub ...
. The latter was the only cause of the damage to thousands of buildings in Chelyabinsk and its neighbouring towns. The fragments then entered
dark flight
''Dark Flight'' ( th, 407 เที่ยวบินผี) is a 2012 Thai horror film. The film was directed by Issara Nadee. It shows the journey of a passenger plane haunted by ghosts that gradually trick the passengers into going insane and ...
(without the emission of light) and created a
strewn field
The term strewn field indicates the area where meteorites from a single fall are dispersed.
It is also often used for the area containing tektites produced by large meteorite impact.''Tektites in the geological record: showers of glass from the s ...
of numerous meteorites on the snow-covered ground (officially named Chelyabinsk meteorites).
The last time a similar phenomenon was observed in the Chelyabinsk region was the Kunashak meteor shower of 1949, after which scientists recovered about weighing over in total.
The Chelyabinsk meteor is thought to be the biggest natural space object to enter Earth's atmosphere since the
1908 Tunguska event,
and the only one confirmed to have resulted in many injuries,
[Historical, normally accurate, Chinese records of the 1490 Ch'ing-yang event describe over 10,000 deaths, but have never been confirmed.] although a small number of panic-related injuries occurred during the Great Madrid Meteor Event of 10 February 1896.
Preliminary estimates released by the
Russian Federal Space Agency
The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...
indicated the object was an asteroid moving at about in a "low trajectory" when it entered Earth's atmosphere. According to the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
, the meteor then pushed through the atmosphere at a velocity of
The
radiant (the apparent position of origin of the meteor in the sky) appears from video recordings to have been above and to the left of the rising Sun.
Early analysis of
CCTV
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
and
dashcam
A dashboard camera or simply dashcam, also known as car digital video recorder (car DVR), driving recorder, or event data recorder (EDR), is an onboard camera that continuously records the view through a vehicle's front windscreen and sometimes ...
video posted online indicated that the meteor approached from the southeast, and exploded about 40 km south of central Chelyabinsk above
Korkino at a height of , with fragments continuing in the direction of
Lake Chebarkul
Lake Chebarkul () is a lake in Chebarkulsky District, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, on the slopes of the southern Urals. The town of Chebarkul lies on its eastern shore, and Chelyabinsk, the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, is located a ...
.
On 1 March 2013, NASA published a detailed synopsis of the event, stating that at peak brightness (at 09:20:33 local time), the meteor was 23.3 km high, located at 54.8°N, 61.1°E. At that time it was travelling at about – almost 60 times the speed of sound.
NASA's webpage in turn acknowledges credit for its data and visual diagrams to:
:Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by resident ...
); William Cooke (Marshall Space Flight Center
The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first ...
); Paul Chodas, Steve Chesley and Ron Baalke (JPL); Richard Binzel (MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
); and Dan Adamo. In November 2013, results were published based on a more careful calibration of dashcam videos in the field weeks after the event during a Russian Academy of Sciences field study, which put the point of peak brightness at 29.7 km altitude and the final disruption of the thermal debris cloud at 27.0 km, settling to 26.2 km, all with a possible systematic uncertainty of ± 0.7 km.
![Chebarkul meteorite sample on lake ice](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Chebarkul_meteorite_sample_on_lake_ice.jpg)
The United States space agency
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
estimated the diameter of the bolide at about 17–20 m and has revised the mass several times from an initial ,
until reaching a final estimate of 10,000 tonnes.
The
air burst's blast wave, when it hit the ground, produced a
seismic wave
A seismic wave is a wave of acoustic energy that travels through the Earth. It can result from an earthquake, volcanic eruption, magma movement, a large landslide, and a large man-made explosion that produces low-frequency acoustic energy. S ...
which registered on seismographs at magnitude 2.7.
The
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society (russian: Ру́сское географи́ческое о́бщество «РГО»), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection wi ...
said the passing of the meteor over Chelyabinsk caused three blasts of different energy. The first explosion was the most powerful, and was preceded by a bright flash, which lasted about five seconds. Initial newspaper altitude estimates ranged from with an explosive equivalent, according to NASA, of roughly , although there is some debate on this yield
(500 kt is exactly the same energy released by the
Ivy King nuclear explosion in 1952). According to a paper in 2013, all these ~500 kiloton yield estimates for the meteor airburst are "uncertain by a factor of two because of a lack of calibration data at those high energies and altitudes".
Because of this, some studies have suggested the explosion to have been as powerful as , which would mean a more powerful explosion than Tunguska and comparable to the
Tsar Bomba
The Tsar Bomba () ( code name: ''Ivan'' or ''Vanya''), also known by the alphanumerical designation "AN602", was a thermonuclear aerial bomb, and the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. Overall, the Soviet physicist Andrei Sa ...
.
The
hypocentre
In seismology, a hypocenter or hypocentre () is the point of origin of an earthquake or a subsurface nuclear explosion. A synonym is the focus of an earthquake.
Earthquakes
An earthquake's hypocenter is the position where the strain energy s ...
of the explosion was to the south of Chelyabinsk, in
Yemanzhelinsk
Yemanzhelinsk (russian: Еманжели́нск) is a town and the administrative center of Yemanzhelinsky District in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located near the border with Kazakhstan on the eastern slopes of the Southern Ural Mountains, s ...
and
Yuzhnouralsk
Yuzhnouralsk (russian: Южноура́льск) is a town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Uvelka River south of Chelyabinsk. Population:
History
It was founded in 1948. Town status was granted to it on February 1, 1963.. I ...
. Due to the height of the air burst, the atmosphere absorbed most of the explosion's energy.
The explosion's
blast wave
In fluid dynamics, a blast wave is the increased pressure and flow resulting from the deposition of a large amount of energy in a small, very localised volume. The flow field can be approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a self-similar sub ...
first reached Chelyabinsk and environs between less than 2 minutes 23 seconds and 2 minutes 57 seconds later.
The object did not release all of its
kinetic energy
In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion.
It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its accele ...
in the form of a blast wave, as some 90
kilotons of TNT of the total energy of the main airburst's
fireball was emitted as visible light according to
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
,
and two main fragments survived the primary airburst disruption at ; they flared around , with
one falling apart at and the other remaining luminous down to
,
with part of the meteoroid continuing on its general trajectory to punch a hole in the frozen
Lake Chebarkul
Lake Chebarkul () is a lake in Chebarkulsky District, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, on the slopes of the southern Urals. The town of Chebarkul lies on its eastern shore, and Chelyabinsk, the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, is located a ...
, an impact that was fortuitously captured on camera and released in November 2013.
The
infrasound
Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low status sound, describes sound waves with a frequency below the lower limit of human audibility (generally 20 Hz). Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perce ...
waves given off by the explosions were detected by 20 monitoring stations designed to detect
nuclear weapons testing
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...
run by the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission, including the distant Antarctic station, some away. The blast of the explosion was large enough to generate infrasound returns, after circling the globe, at distances up to about . Multiple arrivals involving waves that travelled twice around the globe have been identified. The meteor explosion produced the largest
infrasound
Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low status sound, describes sound waves with a frequency below the lower limit of human audibility (generally 20 Hz). Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perce ...
s ever to be recorded by the CTBTO infrasound monitoring system, which began recording in 2001,
so great that they reverberated around the world several times, taking over a day to dissipate.
Additional scientific analysis of US military infrasound data was aided by an agreement reached with US authorities to allow its use by civilian scientists, implemented only about a month before the Chelyabinsk meteor event.
![2013 Chelyabinsk meteor trace](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/2013_Chelyabinsk_meteor_trace.jpg)
A preliminary estimate of the explosive energy by astronomer Boris Shustov, director of the
Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Astronomy, was , another using empirical period-yield scaling relations and the infrasound records, by Peter Brown of the
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by resident ...
gave a value of and represents a best estimate for the yield of this airburst; there remains a potential "uncertainty
n the order of
N, or n, is the fourteenth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet# ...
a factor of two in this yield value".
Brown and his colleagues also went on to publish a paper in November 2013 which stated that the "widely referenced technique of estimating airburst damage does not reproduce the
helyabinskobservations, and that the mathematical relations found in the book ''
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons'' which are based on the
effects of nuclear weapons
The effects of a nuclear explosion on its immediate vicinity are typically much more destructive and multifaceted than those caused by conventional explosives. In most cases, the energy released from a nuclear weapon detonated within the lower ...
–
hich is
Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
almost always used with this technique – overestimate blast damage
hen applied to meteor airbursts. A similar overestimate of the explosive yield of the
Tunguska airburst also exists; as incoming celestial objects have rapid directional motion, the object causes stronger blast wave and thermal radiation pulses at the ground surface than would be predicted by a stationary object exploding, limited to the height at which the blast was initiated-where the object's "momentum is ignored". Thus, a meteor airburst of a given energy is "much more damaging than an equivalent
nergynuclear explosion at the same altitude".
The seismic wave produced when the primary airburst's blast struck the ground yields a rather uncertain "best estimate" of 430 kilotons (momentum ignored),
corresponding to the
seismic wave
A seismic wave is a wave of acoustic energy that travels through the Earth. It can result from an earthquake, volcanic eruption, magma movement, a large landslide, and a large man-made explosion that produces low-frequency acoustic energy. S ...
which registered on seismographs at magnitude 2.7.
![Chelyabinsk meteor trace 15-02-2013](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Chelyabinsk_meteor_trace_15-02-2013.jpg)
Brown also states that the double smoke plume formation, as seen in photographs, is believed to have coincided near the primary airburst section of the dust trail (as also pictured following the
Tagish Lake fireball), and it likely indicates where rising air quickly flowed into the center of the trail, essentially in the same manner as a moving 3D version of a
mushroom cloud
A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...
. Photographs of this smoke trail portion, before it split into two plumes, show this cigar-shaped region glowing
incandescent
Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb ''incandescere,'' to glow white. A common use of incandescence is ...
ly for a few seconds. This region is the area in which the maximum of material
ablation
Ablation ( la, ablatio – removal) is removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosion, erosive processes or by other means. Examples of ablative materials are described below, and include spacecraft materi ...
occurred, with the double plume persisting for a time and then appearing to rejoin or close up.
Injuries and damage
![Chelyabinsk meteor event consequences in Drama Theatre](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Chelyabinsk_meteor_event_consequences_in_Drama_Theatre.jpg)
The blast created by the meteor's
air burst produced extensive ground damage over an irregular
elliptical
Elliptical may mean:
* having the shape of an ellipse, or more broadly, any oval shape
** in botany, having an elliptic leaf shape
** of aircraft wings, having an elliptical planform
* characterised by ellipsis (the omission of words), or by conc ...
area around a hundred kilometres wide, and a few tens of kilometres long, with the secondary effects of the blast being the main cause of the considerable number of injuries. Russian authorities stated that 1,491 people sought medical attention in Chelyabinsk Oblast within the first few days.
Health officials reported 112 hospitalisations, including two in serious condition. A woman with a broken spine was flown to Moscow for treatment. Most of the injuries were caused by the secondary blast effects of shattered, falling or blown-in glass.
The intense light from the meteor, momentarily brighter than the Sun, also produced injuries, leading to over 180 cases of eye pain, and 70 people subsequently reported temporary
flash blindness
Flash blindness is an either temporary or permanent visual impairment during and following exposure of a varying length of time to a light flash of extremely high intensity, such as a nuclear explosion, flash photograph, lightning strike, or extre ...
.
Twenty people reported
ultraviolet
Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nanometer, nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 Hertz, PHz) to 400 nm (750 Hertz, THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than ...
burns similar to
sunburn
Sunburn is a form of radiation burn that affects living tissue, such as skin, that results from an overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, usually from the Sun. Common symptoms in humans and animals include: red or reddish skin that is ho ...
, possibly intensified by the presence of snow on the ground.
Vladimir Petrov, when meeting with scientists to assess the damage, reported that he sustained so much sunburn from the meteor that the skin flaked only days later.
A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a
duck and cover
"Duck and cover" is a method of personal protection against the effects of a nuclear explosion. Ducking and covering is useful in offering a degree of protection to personnel located outside the radius of the nuclear fireball but still within su ...
maneuver and then to leave a building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a
tendon
A tendon or sinew is a tough, high-tensile-strength band of dense fibrous connective tissue that connects muscle to bone. It is able to transmit the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system without sacrificing its ability ...
in one of her arms and left
thigh
In human anatomy, the thigh is the area between the hip (pelvis) and the knee. Anatomically, it is part of the lower limb.
The single bone in the thigh is called the femur. This bone is very thick and strong (due to the high proportion of bone ...
; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts.
The teacher was taken to a hospital which received 112 people that day. The majority of the patients were suffering from cuts.
After the air blast, car alarms went off and mobile phone networks were overloaded with calls.
Office buildings in Chelyabinsk were evacuated. Classes for all Chelyabinsk schools were cancelled, mainly due to broken windows. At least 20 children were injured when the windows of a school and kindergarten were blown in at 09:22.
Following the event, government officials in Chelyabinsk asked parents to take their children home from schools.
Approximately of a roof at a
zinc
Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...
factory collapsed during the incident.
Residents in Chelyabinsk whose windows were smashed quickly sought to cover the openings with anything available, to protect themselves against temperatures of .
Approximately 100,000 home-owners were affected, according to Chelyabinsk Oblast Governor Mikhail Yurevich.
He also said that preserving the water pipes of the city's
district heating
District heating (also known as heat networks or teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating a ...
was the primary goal of the authorities as they scrambled to contain further post-explosion damage.
By 5 March 2013, the number of damaged buildings was tallied at over 7,200, which included some 6,040 apartment blocks, 293 medical facilities, 718 schools and universities, 100 cultural organizations, and 43 sport facilities, of which only about 1.5% had not yet been repaired.
The oblast governor estimated the damage to buildings at more than 1 billion
rubles
The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union.
, currencies named ''rub ...
(approximately ). Chelyabinsk authorities said that broken windows of apartment homes, but not the glazing of enclosed balconies, would be replaced at the state's expense.
One of the buildings damaged in the blast was the
Traktor Sport Palace
Traktor Ice Arena named after Valery Konsantinovich Belousov (), commonly shortened to Traktor Ice Arena, is an indoor sporting arena located in Chelyabinsk, Russia. It is used for various indoor events and is the home arena of Traktor Chelyabin ...
, home arena of
Traktor Chelyabinsk
Traktor Chelyabinsk, also known as Traktor (russian: Трактор), is a professional ice hockey team based in Chelyabinsk, Russia. They are members of the Kharlamov Division of the Eastern Conference of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). F ...
of the
Kontinental Hockey League
The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL; russian: Континентальная хоккейная лига (КХЛ), Kontinental'naya khokkeynaya liga) is an international professional ice hockey league founded in 2008. It comprises member clubs ba ...
(KHL). The arena was closed for inspection, affecting various scheduled events, and possibly the postseason of the KHL.
The irregular elliptical disk shape/"spread-eagled butterfly" ground blast damage area, produced by the airburst, is a phenomenon first noticed upon studying the other larger airburst event:
Tunguska.
Reactions
The Chelyabinsk meteor struck without warning.
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev ( rus, links=no, Дмитрий Анатольевич Медведев, p=ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ mʲɪdˈvʲedʲɪf; born 14 September 1965) is a Russian politician who has been serving as the dep ...
, the
Prime Minister of Russia
The chairman of the government of the Russian Federation, also informally known as the prime minister, is the nominal head of government of Russia. Although the post dates back to 1905, its current form was established on 12 December 1993 fo ...
, confirmed a meteor had struck Russia and said it proved that the "entire planet" is vulnerable to meteors and a
spaceguard
The term Spaceguard loosely refers to a number of efforts to discover, catalogue, and study near-Earth objects (NEO), especially those that may impact Earth (potentially hazardous objects).
Asteroids are discovered by telescopes which repeated ...
system is needed to protect the planet from similar objects in the future.
Dmitry Rogozin
Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin (russian: link=no, Дми́трий Оле́гович Рого́зин; born 21 December 1963) is a Russian politician who served as director general of Roscosmos from 2018 to July 2022. He previously served as deputy p ...
, the deputy prime minister, proposed that there should be an international program that would alert countries to "objects of an extraterrestrial origin",
also called
potentially hazardous object
A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is a near-Earth object – either an asteroid or a comet – with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and is large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact. They ar ...
s.
Colonel General
Colonel general is a three- or four-star military rank used in some armies. It is particularly associated with Germany, where historically general officer ranks were one grade lower than in the Commonwealth and the United States, and was a ra ...
Nikolay Bogdanov, commander of the
Central Military District
The Central Military District (Russian: Центральный военный округ) is a military district of Russia.
It is one of the five military districts of the Russian Armed Forces, with its jurisdiction primarily within the ...
, created task forces that were directed to the probable impact areas to search for fragments of the asteroid and to monitor the situation.
Meteorites
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object en ...
(fragments) measuring were found from
Chebarkul
Chebarkul (russian: Чебарку́ль) is a town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the shores of Lake Chebarkul, west of Chelyabinsk, the administrative center of the oblast. Population:
Etymology
The name of the town derives from t ...
in the Chelyabinsk region.
On the day of the impact, Bloomberg News reported that the
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is an office of the U.N. Secretariat that promotes and facilitates peaceful international cooperation in outer space. It works to establish or strengthen the legal and regulatory framew ...
had suggested the investigation of creating an "Action Team on
Near-Earth Objects
A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...
", a proposed global
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
warning network system, in face of 's approach.
As a result of the impact, two scientists in California proposed
directed-energy weapon
A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy without a solid projectile, including lasers, microwaves, particle beams, and sound beams. Potential applications of this technology include we ...
technology development as a possible means to protect Earth from asteroids.
Furthermore, the
NEOWISE
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 2011, ...
satellite was brought out of hibernation for its second mission extension to scan for near-earth objects. Later in 2013,
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
began annual asteroid impact simulation testing.
Frequency
It is estimated that the
frequency of airbursts from objects 20 metres across is about once in every 60 years.
[ (solution using 2600kg/m^3, 17 km/s, 45 degrees)] There have been
incidents in the previous century involving a comparable energy yield or higher: the
1908 Tunguska event, and, in 1963 off the coast of the
Prince Edward Islands
The Prince Edward Islands are two small uninhabited islands in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean that are part of South Africa. The islands are named Marion Island (named after Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, 1724–1772) and Prince Edward Island ...
in the Indian Ocean.
Two of those were over unpopulated areas; however, the 1963 event may not have been a meteor.
Centuries before, the
1490 Ch'ing-yang event, of an unknown magnitude, apparently caused 10,000 deaths.
[Yau, K., Weissman, P., & Yeomans, D]
Meteorite Falls In China And Some Related Human Casualty Events
''Meteoritics
Meteoritics is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a ''meteoriticist''.
Scientific research in ...
'', Vol. 29, No. 6, pp. 864–871, , bibliographic code: 1994Metic..29..864Y. While modern researchers are skeptical about the 10,000 deaths figure, the 1908 Tunguska event would have been devastating over a highly populous district.
[
]
Origin
Based on its entry direction and speed of 19 kilometres per second, the Chelyabinsk meteor apparently originated in the asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
between Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
and Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
. It was probably an asteroid fragment. The meteorite has veins of black material which had experienced high-pressure shock, and were once partly melted due to a previous collision. The metamorphism
Metamorphism is the transformation of existing rock (the protolith) to rock with a different mineral composition or texture. Metamorphism takes place at temperatures in excess of , and often also at elevated pressure or in the presence of chem ...
in the chondrule
A chondrule (from Ancient Greek χόνδρος ''chondros'', grain) is a round grain found in a chondrite. Chondrules form as molten or partially molten droplets in space before being accreted to their parent asteroids. Because chondrites repres ...
s in the meteorite samples indicates the rock making up the meteor had a history of collisions and was once several kilometres below the surface of a much larger LL chondrite asteroid. The Chelyabinsk asteroid probably entered an orbital resonance
In celestial mechanics, orbital resonance occurs when orbiting bodies exert regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually because their orbital periods are related by a ratio of small integers. Most commonly, this relationsh ...
with Jupiter (a common way for material to be ejected from the asteroid belt) which increased its orbital eccentricity
Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:
* Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal"
Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics
* Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry
* Eccentricity (g ...
until its perihelion
An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion.
General description
There are two apsides in any ellip ...
was reduced enough for it to be able to collide with the Earth.
Meteorites
In the aftermath of the air burst of the body, many small meteorites fell on areas west of Chelyabinsk, generally at terminal velocity
Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity (speed) attainable by an object as it falls through a fluid (air is the most common example). It occurs when the sum of the drag force (''Fd'') and the buoyancy is equal to the downward force of gravit ...
, about the speed of a piece of gravel dropped from a skyscraper. Analysis of the meteor showed that all resulted from the main breakup at 27–34 km altitude. Local residents and schoolchildren located and picked up some of the meteorites, many located in snowdrifts, by following a visible hole that had been left in the outer surface of the snow. Speculators
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many s ...
were active in the informal market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
that emerged for meteorite fragments.
In the hours following the visual meteor sighting, a wide hole was discovered on Lake Chebarkul
Lake Chebarkul () is a lake in Chebarkulsky District, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, on the slopes of the southern Urals. The town of Chebarkul lies on its eastern shore, and Chelyabinsk, the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, is located a ...
's frozen surface. It was not immediately clear whether this was the result of an impact
Impact may refer to:
* Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period
* Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US
Science and technology
* Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event
* Impac ...
; scientists from the Ural Federal University
la, Cogitare, agere, consequi!
, mottoeng = ''Think, act, achieve!''
, established = 1920 (established), 2011 (integrated)
, closed =
, type = Public
, affiliation =
, endowment = RU ...
collected 53 samples from around the hole the same day it was discovered. The early specimens recovered were all under in size and initial laboratory analysis confirmed their meteoric origin. They are ordinary chondrite
The ordinary chondrites (sometimes called the O chondrites) are a class of stony chondritic meteorites. They are by far the most numerous group, comprising 87% of all finds. Hence, they have been dubbed "ordinary". The ordinary chondrites are th ...
meteorites and contain 10 per cent iron
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
. The fall is officially designated as the Chelyabinsk meteorite
The Chelyabinsk meteorite (Russian: Челябинский метеорит, ''Chelyabinskii meteorit'') is the fragmented remains of the large Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 which reached the ground after the meteor's passage through t ...
. The Chelyabinsk meteor was later determined to come from the LL chondrite
The LL chondrites are a group of stony meteorites, the least abundant group of the ordinary chondrites, accounting for about 10–11% of observed ordinary-chondrite falls and 8–9% of all meteorite falls (see meteorite fall statistics). The ordi ...
group. The meteorites were LL5 chondrites having a shock stage of S4, and had a variable appearance between light and dark types. Petrographic
Petrography is a branch of petrology that focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks. Someone who studies petrography is called a petrographer. The mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock are described in detail. The class ...
changes during the fall allowed estimates that the body was heated between 65 and 135 degrees during its atmospheric entry.
In June 2013, Russian scientists reported that further investigation by magnetic imaging below the location of the ice hole in Lake Chebarkul had identified a -size meteorite buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake. Before recovery began, the chunk was estimated to weigh roughly .
Following an operation lasting a number of weeks, it was raised from the bottom of the Chebarkul lake
Lake Chebarkul () is a lake in Chebarkulsky District, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, on the slopes of the southern Urals. The town of Chebarkul lies on its eastern shore, and Chelyabinsk, the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, is located abo ...
on 16 October 2013. With a total mass of , this is the largest found fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. Initially, it tipped and broke the scales used to weigh it, splitting into three pieces.
In November 2013, a video from a security camera was released showing the impact of the fragment at the Chebarkul lake. This is the first recorded impact of a meteorite on video. From the measured time difference between the shadow generating meteor to the moment of impact, scientists calculated that this meteorite hit the ice at about per second, 64 per cent of the speed of sound.
Media coverage
The Russian government put out a brief statement within an hour of the event. Serendipitously the news in English was first reported by the hockey
Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...
site Russian Machine Never Breaks
Russian Machine Never Breaks (RMNB) is a credentialed Washington, D.C. area hockey blog that covers professional ice hockey. Created in 2009, RMNB received local and national media attention when it was the first U.S. media outlet to cover the 2 ...
before heavy coverage by the international media and the Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
ensued, with the Russian government's confirmation less than two hours afterwards. Less than 15 hours after the meteor impact, videos of the meteor and its aftermath had been viewed millions of times.
The number of injuries caused by the asteroid led the Internet-search giant Google to remove a Google Doodle
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running an ...
from their website, created for the predicted pending arrival of another asteroid, . New York City planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a po ...
stated the Chelyabinsk meteor was unpredicted because no attempt had been made to find and catalogue every near-Earth object
A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...
. Doing so would be very difficult, and current efforts only aim at a complete inventory of near-Earth objects. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) is a robotic astronomical survey and early warning system optimized for detecting smaller near-Earth objects a few weeks to days before they impact Earth.
Funded by NASA, and developed an ...
, on the other hand, could now predict some Chelyabinsk-like events a day or so in advance, if and only if their radiant is not close to the Sun.
On 27 March 2013, a broadcast episode of the science television series ''Nova
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...
'' titled "Meteor Strike" documented the Chelyabinsk meteor, including the significant contribution to meteoritic science made by the numerous videos of the airburst posted online by ordinary citizens. The ''Nova'' program called the video documentation and the related scientific discoveries of the airburst "unprecedented". The documentary also discussed the much greater tragedy "that could have been" had the asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere more steeply.
Impactor orbital parameters
Multiple videos of the Chelyabinsk superbolide, particularly from the dashboard cameras and traffic camera
A traffic camera is a video camera which observes vehicular traffic on a road. Typically, traffic cameras are put along major roads such as highways, freeways, expressways and arterial roads, and are connected by optical fibers buried alongside or ...
s which are ubiquitous in Russia, helped to establish the meteor's provenance as an Apollo asteroid
The Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after 1862 Apollo, discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s. They are Earth-crossing asteroids that have an orbital semi-major axis greater than that of the Earth ...
.[ ] Sophisticated analysis techniques included the subsequent superposition of nighttime starfield views over recorded daytime images of the same cameras, as well as the plotting of the daytime shadow vectors shown in several online videos.
The radiant of the impacting asteroid was located in the constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
The origins of the e ...
Pegasus
Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...
in the Northern hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...
. The radiant was close to the Eastern horizon where the Sun was starting to rise.
The asteroid belonged to the Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
group of near-Earth asteroids
A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...
, and was roughly 40 days past perihelion
An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion.
General description
There are two apsides in any ellip ...
(closest approach to the Sun) and had aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun) in the asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
. Several groups independently derived similar orbits for the object, but with sufficient variance to point to different potential parent bodies of this meteoroid. The Apollo asteroid is one of the candidates proposed for the role of the ''parent body'' of the Chelyabinsk superbolide. Other published orbits are similar to the 2-kilometre-diameter asteroid to suggest they had once been part of the same object; they may not be able to reproduce the timing of the impact.
Coincidental asteroid approach
Preliminary calculations rapidly showed that the object was unrelated to the long-predicted close approach of the asteroid 367943 Duende, that flew by Earth 16 hours later at a distance of 27,700 km. The Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, Russian sources, the European Space Agency
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...
, NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
and the Royal Astronomical Society
(Whatever shines should be observed)
, predecessor =
, successor =
, formation =
, founder =
, extinction =
, merger =
, merged =
, type = NGO ...
all concluded that the two asteroids had widely different trajectories and therefore could not have been related.
See also
Notes
References
;Attribution
* ''This article contains portions of text translated from the corresponding article of the Russian Wikipedia. A list of contributors can be found there in its
history
' section.''
Further reading
*
* (website).
Also published as (print).
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
::Synopsis: "A calculation based on the number of casualty events in the Chinese meteorite records suggests that the probability of a meteorite striking a human is far greater than previous estimates."
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
Animation of meteor explosion
by "Strip the Cosmos"
{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Solar System, Science
2013 disasters in Russia
2013 in space
2013 natural disasters
Meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as micr ...
Explosions in 2013
Explosions in Russia
Modern Earth impact events
Meteorite falls
Meteorites found in Russia
Natural disasters in Russia
Kurgan Oblast
Sverdlovsk Oblast
Tyumen Oblast
Articles containing video clips
February 2013 events in Russia