The results, published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that dozens of orbiting and geostationary satellites currently operating in space could be drafted to study potentially dangerous near-Earth objects, or NEOs.

"Sometimes we can use these Earth-viewing meteorological satellites in unconventional ways," said study first author Steven Miller, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University.

"In this case, we used the debris trail left in the atmosphere by a large meteor to infer the direction from which it came and provide some insight on where it came from."

Miller was home watching television on February 15 when footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor streaking across an early morning sky began appearing on