Russian Meteor's Air Blast Was One for the Record Books
Meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in early 2013 topped 500 kilotons and indicates higher risk of future blasts.
Published by the journals Science and Nature, the three related analyses combine data from satellites, seismometers, dashboard cameras, damage surveys, and asteroid fragments to look at the Chelyabinsk event.
In the studies, the international impact teams re-created the roughly 65-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) asteroid's 42,500 mile-per-hour (68,400 kilometer-per-hour) collision with Earth's atmosphere.
The event injured about 1,500 people and damaged thousands of buildings in a part of central Russia that is home to one million people. (See "Russian Meteorite's Fiery Entry Captured by Satellites.")
"Some witnesses reported being burned by the light," says Science study co-author Peter Jenniskens of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
"Not just the windows were broken, but the window frames were pushed in, in the
