Update: Meteor Explodes Over Russia, 1,000 Injured
European Space Agency says meteor strike not connected to asteroid flyby expected Friday afternoon.
Updated at 11:53 a.m.
A 10 ton meteorite entered the Earth’s atmosphere
over Russia’s southern Chelyabinsk region Friday
morning at 33,000 mph, exploding an estimated 18 – 32 miles above ground.
CNN is reporting
that the resulting blast resulted in
500 injuries
(
Update
:
Now upgraded to nearly 1,000
), most of which are said to be non-life-threatening.
The European Space Agency says their experts can “confirm no link between meteor incidents in Russia and asteroid 2012DA14” expected to flyby Earth tonight. NASA will be hosting a live stream event tracking the larger, 150-foot asteroid starting at 2 p.m. EST.
As of 7:50 a.m. EST NASA has not issued a statement on the incident in Russia, sending the following Tweet :
Our friends at
The Atlantic Wire
have been collecting some impressive videos of the incident.
See below
Update:
Video was pulled by user, you can check out this .gif instead:
Another angle:
You can get a sense of how loud the explosion was in this video: