Chelyabinsk Airburst, Damage Assessment, Meteorite Recovery, and Characterization Olga P. Popova et al. Science 342, 1069 (2013); DOI: 10.1126/science.1242642 This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. If you wish to distribute this article to others, you can order high-quality copies for your colleagues, clients, or customers by clicking here. Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles can be obtained by following the guidelines here. 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Copyright 2013 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title Science is a registered trademark of AAAS. RESEARCH ARTICLE efficiently decelerated, avoiding the transfer of mo- mentum to lower altitudes and resulting in less Chelyabinsk Airburst, Damage damage when the blast wave reached the ground. Damage Assessment Assessment, Meteorite Recovery, In the weeks after the event, 50 villages were vis- ited to verify the extent of glass damage. The and Characterization resulting map (Fig. 3) demonstrates that the shock wave had a cylindrical component, extending fur- 1 2,3 4 4 Olga P. Popova, Peter Jenniskens, * Vacheslav Emel’yanenko, Anna Kartashova, thest perpendicular to the trajectory. There was 5 6 1 1 Eugeny Biryukov, Sergey Khaibrakhmanov, Valery Shuvalov, Yurij Rybnov, little coherence of the shock wave in the forward 6 7 8 9 2 Alexandr Dudorov, Victor I. Grokhovsky, Dmitry D. Badyukov, Qing-Zhu Yin, Peter S. Gural, direction, where the disturbance was of long du- 2 10 11,12 11 1 Jim Albers, Mikael Granvik, Läslo G. Evers, Jacob Kuiper, Vladimir Kharlamov, ration, shaking buildings and making people run 13 14 15 16 Andrey Solovyov, Yuri S. Rusakov, Stanislav Korotkiy, Ilya Serdyuk, outside, but causing no damage. Alexander V. Korochantsev,8 Michail Yu. Larionov,7 Dmitry Glazachev,1 Alexander E. Mayer,6 17 18 9 9 Galen Gisler, Sergei V. Gladkovsky, Josh Wimpenny, Matthew E. Sanborn, 1Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres of the Russian Academy Akane Yamakawa,9 Kenneth L. Verosub,9 Douglas J. Rowland,19 Sarah Roeske,9 of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 38, Building 1, Moscow, 119334, 9 20,21 22 23,22 23,22 Russia. 2SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, Nicholas W. Botto, Jon M. Friedrich, Michael E. Zolensky, Loan Le, Daniel Ross, 3 24 25 25 26 27,28 28 CA 94043, USA. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Karen Ziegler, Tomoki Nakamura, Insu Ahn, Jong Ik Lee, Qin Zhou, Xian-Hua Li, 4 28 28 28 29 3 7 Mail Stop 245-1, CA 94035, USA. Institute of Astronomy of Qiu-Li Li, Yu Liu, Guo-Qiang Tang, Takahiro Hiroi, Derek Sears, Ilya A. Weinstein, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pyatnitskaya 48, Moscow, Alexander S. Vokhmintsev,7 Alexei V. Ishchenko,7 Phillipe Schmitt-Kopplin,30,31 119017, Russia. 5Department of Theoretical Mechanics, South 30 32 32 33 Ural State University, Lenin Avenue 76, Chelyabinsk, 454080, Norbert Hertkorn, Keisuke Nagao, Makiko K. Haba, Mutsumi Komatsu, 6 34 Russia. Chelyabinsk State University, Bratyev Kashirinyh Street Takashi Mikouchi, (the Chelyabinsk Airburst Consortium) 129, Chelyabinsk, 454001, Russia. 7Institute of Physics and Tech- nology, Ural Federal University, Mira Street 19, Yekaterinburg, The asteroid impact near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on 15 February 2013 was the largest airburst 620002, Russia. 8Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and on Earth since the 1908 Tunguska event, causing a naturaldisasterinanareawithapopulation Analytical Chemistry of the RAS, Kosygina Street 19, Moscow, 119991, Russia. 9Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, exceeding one million. Because it occurred in an era with modern consumer electronics, field sensors, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA. 10Depart- and laboratory techniques, unprecedented measurements were made of the impact event and the ment of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014 meteoroidthatcausedit.Here,wedocumenttheaccount of what happened, as understood now, using Helsinki, Finland. 11Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch In- 12 comprehensive data obtained from astronomy, planetary science, geophysics, meteorology, meteoritics, stituut, P.O. Box 201, 3730 AE De Bilt, Netherlands. Depart- ment of Geoscience and Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and cosmochemistry and from social science surveys. A good understanding of the Chelyabinsk and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box incident provides an opportunity to calibrate the event, with implications for the study of near-Earth 5048, 2600 GA Delft, Netherlands. 13Tomsk State University, objects and developing hazard mitigation strategies for planetary protection. Lenina Prospect 36, Tomsk, 634050, Russia. 14Research and Production Association “Typhoon,” Floor 2, 7 Engels Street, Obninsk, 249032, Russia. 15Support Foundation for Astronomy helyabinsk Oblast experienced an impact section 1.1). The fireball was first recorded at “Ka-Dar,” P.O. Box 82, Razvilka, 142717, Russia. 16Science and that was 100 times more energetic than the 97-km altitude, moving at 19.16 T 0.15 km/s with Technology Center of the Social and Youth Initiatives Organi- recent 4 kT of TNT–equivalent Sutter’s Mill entry angle 18.3 T 0.2° with respect to the horizon, zation, 3-12-63 Udal’tsova Street, Moscow, 119415, Russia. C 17 1 11 University of Oslo, Physics Building, Sem Saelands Vel 24, meteorite fall ( ). This was the biggest impact over which is slightly faster than reported earlier ( ). 18 land since the poorly observed Tunguska impact in Combined with the best kinetic energy estimate, 0316 Oslo, Norway. Institute of Engineering Sciences Urals 7 Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Komsomolskaya 1908, for which kinetic energy estimates range from an entry mass of 1.3 × 10 kg (with a factor of two Street 34, Yekaterinburg, 620049, Russia. 19Center for Mo- 3to5(2)to10to50MT(3). From the measured uncertainty) and a diameter of 19.8 T 4.6 m is de- lecular and Genomic Imaging, University of California, Davis, period of infrasound waves circum-traveling the rived, assuming a spherical shape and the meteorite- Davis, CA 95616, USA. 20Department of Earth and Planetary 4 3 Sciences, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY globe ( ), an early estimate of ~ 470 kT was derived derived density of 3.3 g/cm basedonx-raycomputed 21 5 10024, USA. Department of Chemistry, Fordham University, for Chelyabinsk ( ). Infrasound data from Russia tomography (SM section 4.2, table S16). Bronx, NY 10458, USA. 22Astromaterials Research and Ex- and Kazakhstan provide 570 T 150 kT; see supple- Size and speed suggest that a shock wave first ploration Science, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX mentary materials (SM) section 1.4 (6). Spaceborne developed at 90 km. Observations show that dust 77058, USA. 23Jacobs Technology, 2224 Bay Area Boulevard, 7 Houston, TX 77058, USA. 24Institute of Meteoritics, University of visible and near-infrared observations ( ) recorded a formation and fragmentation started around 83 km 25 5 8 New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131–0001, USA. De- total irradiated energy of 90 kT ( , ), corresponding and accelerated at 54 km (figs. S16 and S22). partment of Earth and Planetary Materials Science, Tohoku to a kinetic energy of 590 T 50 kT using the Peak radiation occurred at an altitude of 29.7 T University, Aramaki, Aoba, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan. calibration by Nemtchinov et al.(9). All values are 0.7 km at 03:20:32.2 T 0.1s UTC (SM section 26Division of Polar Earth-System Sciences, Korea Polar Research Institute, 26 Songdomi Rae, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 406-840, uncertain by a factor of two because of a lack of 1.1-2), at which time spaceborne sensors mea- 27 5 Korea. National Astronomical Observatories, Beijing, Chinese calibration data at those high energies and altitudes. sured a meteoroid speed of 18.6 km/s ( ). Frag- Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, China. 28State Key The manner in which this kinetic energy was mentation left a thermally emitting debris cloud Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and deposited in the atmosphere determined what in this period, the final burst of which occurred at Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China. 29Department of Geological Sciences, Brown Univer- shock wave reached the ground. Dash-camera 27.0-km altitude (Fig. 1), with dust and gas set- 30 and security camera videos of the fireball (Fig. 1) tling at 26.2 km and with distinctly higher billow- sity, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Analytical BioGeoChemistry, Helmoltz Zentrum Muenchen, Ingoldstäter Landstrasse 1, provide a light curve with peak brightness of ing above that location (fig.