The Chelyabinsk Meteorite: Best Shots

February 15, 2013 will be remembered as the day the sky exploded over Russia. The day the Chelyabinsk meteorites arrived. A small asteroid entered the atmosphere traveling at tremendous speed. It was squeezed until it could not stand the pressure and exploded. The force of the blast was equivalent to about 500 kilotons of TNT. More than 1500 persons were injured and thousands of windows were blown out over a wide area of Russia near the event. Since then thousands of meteorites have been recovered. The largest piece of Chelyabinsk was pulled from the bottom of a lake and weighed hundreds of kilograms. Like all new fallen ordinary chondrites the meteorites were covered with a black fusion crust. Some of the pieces showed remarkable shock features. Some had veins of melted material which had been injected into cracks, other pieces showed large areas of dark glassy melted material. Chelyabinsk may be the meteorite fall of a lifetime. It is certainly an event thousands of Russian will tell their children and grandchildren about.