On February 15 at 3:20:26 UTC, a supersonic flying space rock, roughly the size of a van or a small truck, entered Earth’s atmosphere, exploded at 24,140 meters over Russia’s Chelyabinsk, and produced a total destructive blast power of 500 kilotons. This means the destructive power yield was 30 times the blast yield of the U.S. atomic bomb, named Little [...]
Post Tagged with: “Siberia”
A Day Full of Space Rocks
February 15 was expected to bear witness to a historically close asteroid passage; it just wasn’t expected to see one come crashing down to the surface. In the morning hours of February 15, the city of Chelyabinsk and the surrounding Ural region of Russia came to a screeching halt as residents saw a streaking projectile – clearly too close for [...]
Breaking News: Meteorite Hits Ural Region Causing Panic and Injuries
A meteorite has hit the Ural area, in Russia at 09:22 local time, on February 15. Officials say that the chaos began after a large meteorite disintegrated above the Ural mountain range and partially burned up in the lower atmosphere, resulting in a blast wave, emitting light and resulting in smaller fragments falling down to the ground throughout the Chelyabinsk region. Unofficial reports thought [...]
Roscosmos Selects Second Female Cosmonaut Trainee
Russia’s cosmonaut recruitment drive has selected eight new cosmonaut trainees, including one female prospect. Anna Kikina, 28, a native of Novosibirskin in western Siberia, is now the second active female candidate in Russia, joining Yelena Serova. She is the only recruit of the eight for whom going into space was not a childhood dream and one of three women who [...]
The Russian Pioneers of Space Safety
This article is the first of a three-part series, featuring an exclusive interview with Victor V. Shalaj and Valery I. Trushlyakov, reporting their research on space safety and sustainability. Omsk, a large city in eastern Siberia, is perhaps one of the most significant places in the world to talk about sustainability and space debris. In 1969 the Omsk Polyot (ПО [...]
Cut Cable Severs Russian Link with International Space Station, Satellites
Shortly after the successful November 14 launch of their sixth Meridian dual use communication satellite, Moscow Mission Control lost contact. With everything. Construction workers had severed a communications cable outside the building, resulting in a Mission Control unable to send commands to any of its satellites or the Russian segment of the International Space Station. State news agency RIA Novosti originally [...]
International Space Station Dodges Space Debris From 2009 Collision
The International Space Station orbit was raised one kilometer by Russia’s Mission Control Centre to avoid a possible collision with a fragment of the U.S. communications satellite Iridium-33, which collided with the derelict Cosmos 2251 on February 10, 2009 over Siberia. The raising is the 15th unscheduled maneuver to avoid space debris. The collision between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 [...]
Metal Object Found in Siberia Likely Not from Space
On March 18, inhabitants of the Siberian village Otradnesnky found a large metal object in a nearby forest after reportedly seeing it fall out of the sky. Assuming it to be a piece of space debris, they towed it back to the village, then alerted authorities. The object is about 200 kg, the size of a car and shaped like a [...]
