Asteroid Says Hello to Russia!!

February 15th ,2013 was not a good day for Russia, as an asteroid passes over Russia at about 3:20 UTC with an approx. speed of 40,000 mph (18 km/s). it became a brilliant superbolide meteor over the southern Ural region. The dazzling light of the meteor was bright enough to cast moving shadows during the morning daylight in Chelyabinsk and was observed from Sverdlovsk, Tyumen,Orenburg Oblasts, the Republic of Bashkortostan, and in Kazakhstan. Eyewitnesses also felt intense heat from the fireball.

The asteroid exploded in an air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast at a height of about 15 to 25 km (9.3 to 16 mi).  It exploded with the generation of a bright flash, small fragmentary meteorites and a powerful shock wave. It released 20-30 times more energy than was released from the atomic bombs detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Trail left by the asteroid

The object did not release all of its energy at once, with the total radiated energy of the fireball, which generated the main explosion, estimated to have emitted an energy equivalent to 90 kilotons of TNT, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

About 1,500 people were injured, two seriously. 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, which came minutes after the superbolide's flash. Initially some 4,300 buildings, rising to over 7,200 such structures in six cities across the region were reported to have been damaged by the explosion.

With an estimated initial mass of 11,000 tonnes, and measuring approximately 17 to 20 metres across, the Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event and it is the only known meteor confirmed to have resulted in a large number of injuries.The object had not been detected before atmospheric entry.