NASA estimated the power of the explosion of the meteorite

Power of the blast, which occurred at the time of entry of a meteor over the Chelyabinsk region, was, according to NASA, from 300 to 500 kilotons, according to Associated Press . This is about twenty times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Meteorite 17 meters long with a mass of approximately 10 million tons, entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 64,000 miles per hour, reported on the website of the North American Space Agency, and exploded at a height of 19 to 24 kilometers.

NASA data about Chelyabinsk meteorite differ from those given earlier by the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to Russian experts, the meteorite entered the atmosphere at a speed of 54,000 kilometers per hour and exploded at an altitude of 30-50 kilometers.

Meteorite rain over the Urals was the morning of Friday, February 15. In the Chelyabinsk region, as of late Friday night, after falling fragments of the meteorite hit about 1.2 thousand people, about 50 of them were hospitalized. The blast wave damaged in Chelyabinsk and other locations around three thousand buildings.

According to preliminary estimates the Chelyabinsk region, the material damage from the meteor shower about one billion rubles. In turn, the Ministry of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov, who arrived in the Chelyabinsk region in the evening on February 15, said that to the best of it at the time the data size of the damage is estimated at about 400 million rubles.

NASA estimated the power of the explosion of the meteorite