The 2013 Russian meteor event occurred on the morning of 15 February 2013 when a meteor estimated to be 15 metres (49 ft) in diameter[2] entered Earth's atmosphere as a fireball with a speed of at least 15 km/s (34,000 mph),[3][4] roughly 44 times the speed of sound, over the southern Ural region of Russia, at approximately 09:13 YEKT (03:13 UTC),[5][6] and shattered over the city of Chelyabinsk. A large fragment seems to have hit Lake Chebarkul.[7] The Russian Academy of Sciences estimated that the meteor, called KEF-2013,[8] had a mass of 10 tons[9] and the air burst occurred at an altitude between 30–50 km (19–31 mi) above the ground.[10] The meteor was not detected by radar before its approach.[11] The Chelyabinsk meteor is one of the largest recorded objects to have hit the Earth since the 1908 Tunguska event, and the only known such event to result in a large number of casualties, although individuals have been injured by failed rocket launches or re-entering space debris and in the 1950s one American woman was injured when a meteorite hit her house.[12]

The object may be classified as a fireball or bolide according to Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program,[13] and the event has been referred to as an air burst, that is, an explosion of a meteor during its passage through the atmosphere.[14] According to the preliminary estimation of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, the meteor was moving along a low trajectory with a speed of about 30 km/s (19 mi/s).[15] Though the known near-miss of asteroid 2012 DA14, occurred about 15 hours later, astronomers have concluded that the two events are unrelated.

About 1,200 people have been reported injured, mainly by broken window glass shattered by the shock wave; two are reported in serious condition.[1] Up to 3,000 buildings in six cities across the region have reportedly been damaged due to the explosion and impacts. [16] [17] The ablation of the meteor in the sky created a dazzling light, bright enough to cast shadows during broad daylight in Chelyabinsk and to be observed in the Sverdlovsk oblast, Orenburg, and Kazakhstan.