The meteor that exploded over the Russian city Chelyabinsk last year may have injured over 1,000 people, but it helped researchers learn about the potential impact even a small meteor can have on our planet.
"Our goal was to understand all circumstances that resulted in the shock wave," meteor expert Peter Jenniskens, co-lead author of a report, said.
Extensive video documentation allowed researchers to look closely at its impact, and get ideas for mitigation efforts in the future, a NASA news release reported.
"It was important that we followed up with the many citizens who had firsthand accounts of the event and recorded incredible video while the experience was still fresh in their minds," Olga Popova of the Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said.
By looking at the videos researchers were able to calculate that the meteor hit the Earth's atmosphere at speed of 42,500 mph and shattered about 19 miles above the surface. The meteor appeared to be brighter than the Sun to anyone within a 62 mile radius. Researchers believe between 9,000 to 13,000 pounds of meteor hit the ground.
A research team believes the abundance of shock fractures noticed in a 1,400 pound fragment pulled out of a local lake may have contributed to the meteor's breakup.
"One of these meteorites broke along one of these shock veins when we pressed on it during our analysis," Derek Sears, a meteoriticist at Ames, said.
Researchers noticed the shock veins contained small iron grains, which may have "precipitated" out of the meteor fragment as it cooled down.
"There are cases where impact melt increases a meteorite's mechanical strength, but Chelyabinsk was weakened by it," Mike Zolensky, a cosmochemist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said.
The ancient impact may have occurred 4.4 billion years ago, which was only 115 million years after the birth of our solar system.
"Events that long ago affected how the Chelyabinsk meteoroid broke up in the atmosphere, influencing the damaging shockwave," Jenniskens said.
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