A meteor shower blast that occurred above the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk left 1,200 people injured with 200 of them being children. NASA announced that this was the largest meteor observed in 100 years.
A meteor shower blast in Russian left more than a thousand people injured with 200 of them being children. Most of the injuries were caused due to the shattering of window panes in offices, schools and colleges.
"I woke up hearing a blast. It felt like the whole building jumped up," said Igor Chudnovsky, a commercial director in the town of Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountain range. "I saw a light, it looked like it was from a nuclear explosion, like I had seen in documentaries."
According to NASA, the meteor was merely the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons but is expected to be the largest meteor seen in over hundred years. The space agency said that the blast exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs. Fortunately most of the energy was absorbed by the atmosphere.
The meteor blast took place just hours before Earth was expected to experience its closest encounter with an asteroid. "This is indeed very rare and it is historic," Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science said on NASA TV. "These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don't see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. "
