A 66-foot asteroid blindsided Russia’s Chelyabinsk and injured 1,500 people in 2013. 13 years later, only 11 asteroids have ever been caught before hitting Earth

A bright flash in the sky followed by a powerful blast that left hundreds of people injured. The story goes back to year 2013 when people in Chelyabinsk, Russia had little warning before a bright flash tore across the sky on February 15. The powerful blast shattered windows and sent around 1,500 people to hospitals and clinics.

The asteroid was about 66 feet wide. It never reached the ground as one intact rock, but its explosion was strong enough to damage buildings across the region. The frightening part was that nobody had spotted it before it entered Earth's atmosphere. The information is taken from The Planetary Society, National Museums Scotland and Britannica.

Why did the asteroid go unnoticed

The space rock came from the direction of the Sun. Its glare made it difficult to see, and by the time it became visible, it was already racing through Earth's atmosphere.

At a speed of about 42,000 miles per hour the asteroid broke apart about 19 miles above the earth. The light was for a time brighter than the Sun. The explosion gave off energy that experts say is equal, to 500 kilotons of TNT. This was 30 times the power of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

The explosion happened high enough for much of its energy to be absorbed by the atmosphere. But the shockwave still caused serious damage on the ground.

Windows broke across Chelyabinsk and nearby areas, leaving people injured by flying glass. Many had gone to their windows after seeing the flash, only to be caught by the shockwave that followed. The damage was estimated at one billion rubles, or about £11 million.

The incident showed how an asteroid does not have to hit the ground to hurt people. A powerful explosion in the atmosphere can be dangerous enough.

Most space rocks that reach Earth are too small to actually pose a serious threat. Tiny particles usually burn up in the atmosphere while many fragments that survive fall to the ground without causing much damage.

Larger objects are a different story altogether. This Chelyabinsk event in 2013 was the apparently most dramatic near-Earth airburst since the 1908 Tunguska explosion in Siberia. The 1908 explosion is described as the largest impact event in recorded history.

The threat can become far greater when a much larger asteroid or comet strikes Earth. In 1980 physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues showed proof that a big object, six miles wide was tied to the mass extinction that happened 66 million years ago and that killed the dinosaurs and many sea animals.

Chelyabinsk didn't happen on that big of a scale. Yet it showed that even a smaller object can still cause injuries and damage.

The challenge is finding an asteroid early enough to understand where it is headed. The Chelyabinsk rock was difficult to detect because it approached from the Sun's direction.

Another asteroid, 367943 Duende, was expected to pass much farther from Earth later on the same day. The Planetary Society used the coincidence to draw attention to asteroid research and the need for better observations.



New technology, including the NEO Surveyor spacecraft being developed, is intended to help scientists find near-Earth objects sooner and work out their paths more accurately. Early detection could give researchers more time to assess a potential threat and consider ways to reduce the risk to people.

A fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite is now held by National Museums Scotland, preserving a small piece of an event that caught an entire region by surprise.

The 2013 explosion is a reminder that the danger from asteroids is not limited to giant space rocks capable of causing mass extinctions. Even an object just 66 feet wide can leave thousands of people injured when it arrives without warning.