10 times more powerful than Hiroshima: NASA told about the explosion of a meteorite in Kamchatka

In December, 2018, the meteorite’s largest explosion occurred after an incident in Chelyabinsk in 2013. However, this happened away from people, so the phenomenon went almost unnoticed. This was told the "BBC" NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson.

Фото: Depositphotos

According to the agency, the meteorite during the destruction of the atmosphere released energy 10 times more than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, writes Tjournal. As Johnson explained, such large meteorites fall to Earth no more than two or three times in 100 years.

NASA told me that a meteorite entered the atmosphere of the Earth 18 December at a speed of 32 kilometers per second at a very steep angle of seven degrees. The destruction of the meteorite with the release of shock waves occurred at an altitude of 25,6 kilometers above the surface of the planet. The power of the "explosion" was 173 kilotons in TNT equivalent.

It released 40% of the energy of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, but it all happened over the Bering Sea, so there was no such effect in the news. “This is another item in our defense arsenal - there is a lot of water on the planet,” says Kelly Fast, manager of near-Earth object observation at NASA.

Map of meteorites on the release of energy upon entry into the atmosphere. The most powerful are the Chelyabinsk meteorite (red dot in the center) and Kamchatka (bright orange dot to the right). Image nasa jpl.

As in the case of Chelyabinsk, NASA did not know that a meteorite would fall on Kamchatka. The agency learned about this from the US military, who spotted an explosion in the atmosphere from satellites.

The fall of the meteorite on Chelyabinsk happened 15 February 2013 of the year. Then a celestial body with a diameter of 17 meters and a mass of about 10 thousand tons entered the earth's atmosphere near the city. He was named the largest meteorite that fell to Earth after the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 year.

The meteorite collapsed as a result of braking and singled out shock waves with a power of about 440 kilotons of TNT. Due to the fact that the incident occurred during the day near a large city, it became one of the most documented cases of the fall of a large celestial body in history.

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