24 October 2013
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This image, acquired by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, shows asteroid Ida and its tiny moon.
Credit: NASA-JPL
On 16 October 2013, Russian officials found the largest fragment so far of the blazing meteorite that exploded, at an altitude of about 30 km, over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, on 15 February 2013. Divers aided by a mechanical winch lifted it from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk. The space rock, however, while being weighed, broke into three chunks, weighing together over 570 kg.
A 6-meter-wide hole in the frozen surface of Lake Chebarkul had marked clearly where the search for meteoric debris should start. It took eight months of careful searching, to identify and recover the cosmic boulder, buried under mud, at the bottom of Chebarkul.
The huge meteorite that burst over Chelyabinsk is estimated to have been approximately 17 meters across, and had a mass of nearly 10,000 tonnes! It is believed to be a member of a group of asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit, known as Apollo asteroids.
References
Wikipedia
Yahoo News
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist