By Peter Weber
Meteor shower bath happen all the time . Most are thirstily prognosticate annual events , like thePerseid meteor showerin August , theOrionidsin October , and theGeminidsin December . The meteors often look like shooting stars seconds before their mass burns up in our planet ’s ambiance . But in 2013 , a monumental meteorite did n’t just irrupt in the skies above Russia — it split into fireballs and slammed into Earth . And it was watch on camera .
The city of Chelyabinsk , in the Ural Mountains about 930 Admiralty mile east of Moscow , waspeltedby at least onemeteoriteon February 15 , 2013 , freaking out residents as bright streaks blaze away across the sky and garish explosion shook windows . The meteorite was estimated to be20 meters(65.6 feet ) wide and journey at 42,690 mph when it exploded about18 milesabove the surface of the Earth , showering the area with molten stone .
According to the Planetary Society , the blast emitted a shockwave equivalent to the energy from 500 kilotons ( more than 550,000 slews ) of dynamite . Residents close to the result were offend by vanish impoverished glass after they had glimpsed a volley of lightness outdoors and become to their windows to see what had happened . Motorists driving in the metropolis captured the setting on their dashboard cameras .
More than 7000 building were damaged and 1500 people hurt by the force play of the shockwave — though , if the meteorite had exploded any stuffy to Earth ’s surface , the destruction would have been exponentially more catastrophic .
But that may not have been the scariest part of the event . What alarmedNASAand other space agencies was that no one had find the asteroid as it hurtled toward Earth . Since the 2013 event , agencies havestepped up developmentof asteroid - detect system so that the next asteroid - turned - meteorite wo n’t catch officials off - safeguard again .
A version of this article was originally published in 2013 and has been updated for 2023 .
