Chelyabinsk meteor: Ten years on from ‘wake-up call’, how safe are we from a potentially catastrophic strike?
It wasn’t quite the day the Earth stood still, but those who witnessed a fiery asteroid briefly outshine the sun as it soared towards the Russian city of Chelyabinsk will almost certainly never forget it.
Comparable to the size of a house and travelling at a scintillating 11 miles per second, what was quickly dubbed the Chelyabinsk meteor arrived unannounced in a manner reminiscent of a science-fiction disaster film. It was an unnerving spectacle.
Dashcam footage from the morning of 15 February 2013, in the central Russian city close to the Ural Mountains, shows the small asteroid entering the Earth’s atmosphere before it exploded with 30 times more force than the US atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in the Second World War.
Windows shattered, buildings were damaged, and hundreds of people were injured – but Chelyabinsk got lucky.
“Had it been directly over the city, the damage would have been worse,” warns NASA‘s planetary defence officer Lindley Johnson. “It was definitely a wake-up call.”
‘We’ve never seen anything like it since’
Working with partners like the European Space Agency, Mr Johnson’s department warns of any impacts to Earth by comets and asteroids and guides the response.
A standard test case was a “shooting star” asteroid that soared above the English Channel this week, which was tracked and publicised in advance, so people could see it for themselves.
Chelyabinsk was no standard test case.
“We’ve never seen anything like it since we started working in this area,” says Mr Johnson, whose office inside the US space agency was only established in 2016.
“It was daylight, clearly visible in the daytime sky, and that doesn’t happen very often.
“It came in on the daylight side of Earth, and we had no chance of being able to detect it ahead of time with the ground-based observatories that we used to find these objects at that time.”
The point of impact of the meteor
What are the chances of another Chelyabinsk?
Mr Johnson was in Vienna, Austria, on the day of Chelyabinsk’s arrival, attending meetings of UN members of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
It didn’t take long for recommendations on how to protect the Earth from such events to be endorsed, including an international asteroid warning network.
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of Queen’s University, Belfast, is an expert in these so-called near-Earth objects, and a committed member of the “planetary defence community”.
“We’re very open about what we find and our current state of knowledge about potential impact risks,” he says. “All asteroids that are detected are announced on public websites.
“Technology has come a long way in terms of how well you can detect asteroids, even as small as Chelyabinsk, but there’s still the chance that one could sneak through. And it’s quite likely that the next significant asteroid we have would be unannounced.”
The shockwave damaged buildings and smashed windows
Fragments of the meteor were collected
How are we protecting ourselves?
Chelyabinsk was considered a small asteroid – that and its arrival during daylight is why it was hard to see coming.
“We’re still vulnerable to those that are coming from the sun,” admits Mr Johnson.
“Most of these objects come from a main belt of asteroids out between Mars and Jupiter, and when they’re coming inbound into the inner solar system, we can find them in the night sky. But when they loop around the sun and come back out, that’s when we’re vulnerable.”
The key to being able to expect the unexpected, he says, is space-based observation.
NASA is working on the $1.2bn (£985m) Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor for launch in 2028, which will be the first space telescope specifically designed to hunt asteroids and comets that may be potential hazards to Earth.
Even then, Chelyabinsk was far smaller than the asteroids NEO will focus on. Amy Mainzer, NEO Surveyor’s principal investigator, says it will prioritise “finding the one asteroid that could cause a really bad day for a lot of people”.
Also in the repertoire is the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft. During testing last year, it was deliberately crashed into an asteroid and successfully altered its orbit.
An illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft on a collision course with the asteroid Dimorphos. Pic: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL
What if another one gets through?
Chelyabinsk’s arrival showcased the importance of quick and effective communication – its arrival was rapidly documented around the world, Russian scientists shared their findings, fragments have been collected, studied, and found new homes, and the event informed international policy.
Prof Fitzsimmons says such transparency and coordination would again be vital, perhaps even more so in an age where misinformation can quickly spread.
Were such an asteroid to break through the atmosphere today, over a populated area, it would do so in a far more fragile geopolitical climate than back in 2013, with Russia’s war in Ukraine and an escalating US-China row over the perceived threat of flying objects.
“When these kinds of events are determined to be of natural causes, the flow of information is pretty good even in today’s environment,” says Mr Johnson. “But there certainly is concern in knowing quickly that it’s a natural event versus something that’s human caused.
“The entry and detonation of these objects by the heat pressure in the atmosphere, to the human eye, can look very much like an attack, whereas sophisticated instrumentation rapidly discerns the difference.”
Not a war zone, but the trail of Chelyabinsk’s meteor
‘A long way to go to find them all’
At the moment, there are some 31,000 asteroids being tracked – up from around 9,500 in 2013.
It’s a sign of how much more seriously the prospect of a dangerous impact has been taken since Chelyabinsk, which was the largest and best recorded asteroid impact on Earth since 1908. That was when an asteroid exploded over Siberia, flattening some 80 million trees in a blast equivalent to 15 million tons of dynamite.
Not being near a built-up area was again incredibly fortunate.
Russia’s sheer size is all that’s made it a relative hotbed of historic asteroid activity. With 70% of the Earth being covered by water, odds are that most asteroids – detected or not – end up in the ocean. An impact like Chelyabinsk is probably a once-in-a-century event, reckons NASA.
None of the 31,000 asteroids we know of are predicted to hit Earth in the next 100 years, says Prof Fitzsimmons, but there’s still “a long way to go to find them all”.
“But I’ll reassure you – I still come into work and pay into my pension plan.”
A passenger bus burst into flames after a motorbike crashed into it, killing at least 25 people and injuring several others in southern India.
A fire ripped through the bus within minutes early on Friday, trapping dozens of passengers as it sped along a highway near Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh state.
Some people managed to break windows, leaping to safety with minor injuries, while others were charred to death, senior police official Vikrant Patil said.
Volunteers working amid the debris of the bus. Pic: AP
There were 44 passengers on board, most of whom were asleep at the time of the crash.
The bus was gutted and the unidentified bike rider also died, Mr Patil said.
The accident occurred in Chinnatekuru village near Kurnool, around 130 miles (210 kilometres) south of Hyderabad.
The bus was travelling between the cities of Hyderabad in Telangana state and Bengaluru in Karnataka state.
The motorbike rammed into the speeding bus from behind and became stuck, Mr Patil said. It was dragged for some distance, causing sparks that engulfed the bus’s fuel tank.
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“As the smoke started spreading, the driver stopped the bus and tried to put the fire out by using a fire extinguisher, but the fire was so intense he couldn’t control it,” Mr Patil said.
A team of forensic experts was investigating the incident.
India‘s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered his condolences to the bereaved families.
The makers of the furniture lift used by the Louvre thieves have told Sky News the device is “certainly not intended for burglaries” after publishing a tongue-in-cheek advert making the most of the product’s sudden fame.
Bocker manufactures the Agilo furniture lift that was used in Sunday’s daring daytime heist.
The day after thieves made off with a haul of France’s Crown Jewels worth €88m (£76m), the firm posted a photograph showing the lift inside the police cordon next to the Paris museum with the tagline “when you need to move fast”.
Posted on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, it shows the vehicle’s ladder propped up against the side of the building, telling prospective buyers the lift can carry “up to 400kg of treasures at 42m per minute – as quiet as a whisper”.
CEO Alexander Bocker told Sky News he and his wife, marketing manager Julia Scharwatz, realised their product had been used in the heist when they saw photos from the scene on Sunday afternoon.
“We were shocked that our lift had been completely misused for this robbery, as it is not approved for transporting people,” he said. “And certainly not intended for burglaries.
“Once the initial shock had subsided and it was clear that no one had been injured, black humour took over.
“We brainstormed a bit and played slogan ping pong. My wife finalised it with her marketing team on Monday morning.”
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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist
Users have generally seen the funny side, with one Instagram comment saying the post “might be the best ad I’ve seen this year” and another suggesting the company deserves “the Oscar for the cleverest advertising”.
Mr Bocker said “99% of the feedback ” has been “thoroughly positive”. “We understand that not everyone shares this sense of humour. Humour rarely, if ever, appeals to everyone, but the vast majority laughed heartily.”
As of Friday afternoon, more than 40,000 people had liked the post on Instagram.
The CEO said his company has had enquiries from around the world and “many congratulations on our successful marketing campaign”.
A police officer swabs the lift for any traces of evidence. Pic: Louvre
The lift used by the thieves belonged to one of the firm’s customers, who rents out furniture lifts in the Greater Paris area, he explained.
“During a demonstration on how to use the furniture lift, it was apparently stolen and reported as such by our customer,” Mr Bocker said. “It appears that the company’s branding has been removed and the number plates replaced.”
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What will happen to stolen jewels?
The Louvre reopened to visitors on Wednesday, having shut shortly after the heist took place on Sunday morning.
The eight stolen objects remain missing and the thieves, who escaped on motorbikes, are still at large.
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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded
Museum director Laurence des Cars offered to resign when she appeared before French senators on Wednesday, admitting that the four-minute raid was a “terrible failure” and that the site’s security cameras, which do not offer full coverage of the building’s facade, were inadequate.
It came just months after employees went on strike, warning of chronic understaffing and under-resourcing, and saying there were too few eyes on too many rooms.
US sanctions against Russia’s two largest energy companies, the state-owned Rosneft and privately held Lukoil, are perhaps the most significant economic measures imposed by the West since the invasion of Ukraine.
If fully implemented, they have the potential to significantly choke off the flow of fossil fuel revenue that funds Russia’s war machine, but their power lies not in directly denying Russia access to the tankers, ports and refineries that make the oil trade turn, but the US financial system that greases the wheels.
Ever since the invasion, the Russian government has proved masterful at evading sanctions, aided and abetted by allies of economic convenience and an oil industry with decades of experience.
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New US sanctions on Russia: What do we know?
While the West, principally the EU, has largely turned off the taps and stopped buying Russian oil, China, India and Turkey became the largest consumers, with a shadow fleet of tankers ensuring exports continued to flow.
Data from the Centre for Research into Energy and Clean Air (CREA) shows that while fossil fuel revenues have fallen from more than €1bn a day before the war, they have remained above €600m since the start of 2023, only dipping towards €500m in the last month.
None of that oil has been heading for the US, but these sanctions will directly impact the ability of the Russian companies, and anyone doing business with them, to operate within America’s financial orbit.
According to the order from the US Office for Foreign Asset Control, the sanctions block all assets of the two companies, their subsidiaries and a number of named individuals, as well as preventing US citizens or financial institutions from doing business with them.
It also threatens foreign financial institutions that “facilitate transactions… involving Russia’s military-industrial base” with direct or secondary sanctions.
Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting in Moscow.
Pic: Sputnik/Reuters
In practice, the measures should prevent the two companies from accessing not just dollars, but trading markets, insurance and other services with any financial connection to the US.
Taken in harness with similar steps announced by the UK earlier this month, analysts believe they can have a genuinely chilling effect on the market for Russian oil and gas.
Russia’s customers for oil in China, India and Turkey will also be affected, with the largest companies, state-owned and private, expected to be unwilling to take the risk of engaging directly with sanctioned entities.
Indian companies are already reported to be “recalibrating” their imports following the announcement, which came just a week after Donald Trump announced an additional 25% import tariff on Indian goods as punishment for the country’s reliance on Russian oil.
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That does not mean that Russian oil and gas exports will cease. There are other unsanctioned Russian energy companies that can still trade, and ever since the first barrel of oil was tapped, the industry has proved adept at evading sanctions intended to interrupt its flow from one country or another.
Any significant increase in the oil price beyond the 5% seen in the aftermath of the announcement could also put pressure on the White House, which is at least as sensitive to fuel prices at home as it is to foreign wars.
But analysts Kpler expect the sanctions to cause “an immediate, short-term hiatus in Russian crude exports, as it will take time for sellers to reorganise and rebuild their trading systems to circumvent restrictions and ease buyers’ concerns”.
And Russian gas will, for now, continue to flow into Europe, where distaste for Vladimir Putin‘s imperial ambitions has not killed the appetite for his fuel. While the EU has this week imposed sanctions on liquified natural gas (LNG), they will not be fully enforced until 2027.
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