February 16, 2013 – RUSSIA – At a news conference Friday, NASA scientists said the object that exploded over Russia was a “tiny asteroid” that measured roughly 45 feet across, weighed about 10,000 tons and traveled about 40,000 mph. The object vaporized roughly 15 miles above the surface of the Earth, causing a shock wave that triggered the global network of listening devices that was  established to detect nuclear test explosions. The force of the explosion measured between 300 and 500 kilotons, equivalent to a modern nuclear bomb, according to Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Large fireball blazes a trail through the sky over Russia. The trail of a falling object is seen above an apartment block in Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Friday in an image taken from video.

February 15, 2013 – SIBERIA - Bright objects, tentatively identified as fragments of a meteorite, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast swath of territory. Around 500 people were reported to have been injured, most from breaking glass. Emergency officials had reported no deaths by Friday afternoon but said that 14 people had been hospitalized. Yelena Smirnykh, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, told Ekho Moskvy radio that she believed the meteorite broke apart and fell in several places. Another government expert, who spoke to Moscow FM radio station, said he believed it may have been a bolide, a type of fireball meteor that explodes in the earth’s atmosphere because of its composition or angle of entry and can be observed from the ground.