Huge meteor explosion was detected off Russia

The US military detected a huge fireball exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere in December but went largely unnoticed.

The explosion occurred over the Bering Sea, off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
The blast was the second largest of its kind in 30 years, and the biggest since the fireball over Chelyabinsk in Russia six years ago.

The meteor, measuring several metres in size, exploded 25.6km above the Earth’s surface, with an impact energy of 173 kilotonnes – 10 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA, told BBC News a fireball this big is only expected about two or three times every 100 years.

Kelly Fast, near-Earth objects observations programme manager at NASA, discussed the event at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that is taking place at The Woodlands, near Houston, Texas.

US military satellites picked up the blast last year and NASA was notified of the event by the US Air Force.

Via BBC