Meteorite of the week
A new meteorite every Monday: one remarkable stone or iron, its story in brief and why it matters to science. Earlier weeks are listed below.
Chelyabinsk
The 2013 airburst over Russia that shattered thousands of windows and reminded the world that asteroid impacts still happen.
- Type
- Ordinary chondrite (LL5)
- Fell or found
- Fell (witnessed and widely filmed)
- Year
- 2013 (15 February)
- Country
- Russia
- Mass
- asteroid of about 12,000 tonnes; roughly 1 tonne of fragments recovered
At about 9.20 in the morning on 15 February 2013, people in and around the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia's southern Ural region saw a fireball so bright that, for a moment, it outshone the Sun. Dashboard cameras, security cameras and phones recorded it streaking across the sky, leaving a thick, glowing trail. Then, after an eerie silence lasting a minute or more, a shock wave hit. Windows burst across the city, doors were blown in, and a factory roof partly collapsed.
Chelyabinsk transformed how the world thinks about smaller asteroids. Before 2013, much attention focused on the rare kilometre-sized bodies that could cause global catastrophe. Chelyabinsk showed that an object only the size of a house can injure many people. Its abundant video footage allowed scientists to reconstruct its path and orbit in great detail, and it helped spur international work on planetary defence, including better sky surveys and agreed plans for warning the public.
Most injuries were caused by breaking glass, because people went to their windows to look at the flash.
Earlier weeks
This is the first meteorite of the week. Each Monday the previous one moves down here, so the list grows week by week.
See also
All 60 famous meteorites have their full stories, and the catalogue lists every known fall and find. Seen a fireball yourself? Report it here.