Astronomers Monitor The Path Of Fragments Of The Moscow Meteorite After Its Explosion

On the morning of October 27, the sky of central Russia, including Moscow, witnessed the passage of a bright meteor that quickly turned into a hot meteor as a result of friction with the Earth’s atmosphere, heading from east to west over the Vologda and Cherepovets regions and the northern part of the artificial Lake Rybnysk.

In the twentieth second of its flight, near the city of Pestovo in the Novgorod region, the meteorite split into fragments as a result of two powerful explosions at an altitude of about 42 km, and then was completely destroyed by a final explosion at an altitude of 32 km. The fragments were scattered along the route in the areas between Borovichi, Vyshny Volochok, Maksatikha and Pestovo, and some fragments may have reached the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway M-11 “Neva”.

The horizontal speed of the meteorite was about 7 km/s, and the vertical speed was about 2 km/s, and as it slowed down in the final stage, the fragments fell almost vertically. There may currently be pieces as small as 1 cm in size and some larger pieces the size of a tennis ball or basketball, but finding them is difficult due to swamps, lakes and dense forests, but their mineral nature may facilitate the search.

Astronomers confirmed that the Moscow meteorite is not part of any orbital space device, although its path raises many scientific questions.

Source: VK.ru