Meteorite Impact
Primary reference(s)
NASA, no date. Meteors & Meteorites: What’s the difference between a meteor, meteoroid and meteorite. Science Solar System Exploration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Accessed 14 October 2020.
Additional scientific description
Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as ‘space rocks’. When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or ‘shooting stars’ are called meteors. When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite (NASA, no date).
On 15 February 2013, a meteor exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, southern Russia. Although no people or buildings were hit by the resulting meteorite, the shockwave from the exploding object injured about 1500 people and caused damage to 7200 buildings in the region. The fireball was captured on video, mainly by dash cameras, and posted on the internet by news organisations and individuals (Nelson, 2018).
Although the Chelyabinsk meteorite probably weighed about 12,000 to 13,000 tonnes and measured 17 to 20 metres in diameter before it exploded, scientists were quick to state that it was very small compared to other objects that could potentially hit the Earth. The explosion released energy estimated at about 500 kilotons of TNT (about 20 to 30 times more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb). The event brought to the world’s attention the very real hazards associated with the impact of objects from outer space (Nelson, 2018). Metrics and numeric limits Not identified.
Metrics and numeric limits
Not identified.
Key relevant UN convention / multilateral treaty
Not identified.
Examples of drivers, outcomes and risk management
Meteorite impacts produce an array of impact effects that can harm human populations: wind blast, overpressure shock, thermal radiation, cratering, seismic shaking, ejecta deposition, and tsunami. Rumpf et al. (2017) quantified the contributions of each of these effects on overall losses due to a meteorite impact of a given size in a global setting.
References
NASA, no date. Meteors & Meteorites: What’s the difference between a meteor, meteoroid and meteorite. Science Solar System Exploration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Accessed 14 October 2020.
Nelson, S.A., 2018. Meteorites, Impacts, and Mass Extinction. Accessed 14 October 2020.
Rumpf, C., H. Lewis and P. Atkinson, 2017. Asteroid impact effects and their immediate hazards for human populations. Geophysical Research Letters, 44.