A meteor crash landed in Moscow, injuring 1200 people, 200 were children. The meteor strike occurred on Feb. 15, 2013. NASA officials were aware that an asteroid was on a near earth path, but the meteor's entry was undetected.
Scientists tried to piece together the chain of events that led to the disaster on the very same day a small asteroid passed close to Earth
The meteor touched down on a small school. The injuries sustained by the school's students, faculty and neighboring businesses, were mostly by glass that exploded into the school and workplaces, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry. Others suffered skull trauma and broken bones. No deaths were reported.
The New York Times reports, "Students at the institute crammed through a staircase thickly blanketed with glass and from there out to the street, where hundreds of people were standing in awe, looking at the sky."
The New York Times continues, "The flash had come in blinding white, so bright that the vivid shadows of buildings slid swiftly and sickeningly across the ground. The light burst yellow, then orange. And then there was the sound of frightened, confused people."
Peter Brown, director of the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration at Canada’s Western University, said the meteor is 50 feet in diameter and weighed approximately 7,000 tons.
Reportedly the explosion was equivalent to 300 kilotons of TNT, making it the largest recorded strike in over 100 years, since the 1908 Tunguska explosion in Siberia, conceded to have been caused by an asteroid.
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