Russia Gets Hit By Meteorite. Is This a Piece of Asteroid 2012 DA14 Coming to the Sky Near You Today?

• Moment meteorite exploded in the sky above Russian town as doctors treat 950 people injured when sonic boom shattered windows


• Large object flashed across the sky at 9.20am local time 
• Pictures show a streak of smoke followed by several bright blasts of flames
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• 82 of the injured are children and two are in intensive care
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• Landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a neighbouring town 
• 6,000 square feet of a roof at a zinc factory collapsed 
• One local said it 'was like a scene from the Armageddon movie'
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• Same day as Asteroid 2012 DA14, which is due to skim Earth's orbit tonight




• The city of Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow and close to the Kazakhstan border, took the brunt of the super sonic impact.







Spectacular sky: The Urals region was struck by falling meteorite fragments which fell in the city of Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow and close to the Kazakhstan border







• Tim O'Brien, associate director of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, said the injuries were caused when the meteor created a sonic boom.   'This reasonably large chunk of rock was moving faster than the speed of sound, maybe 20,000 miles per hour. It made a sonic boom in the atmosphere, and that hit buildings and shattered windows. That is what seems to have caused the injuries,' he explained. 


• A six metre wide hole was found in the ground close to Lake Chebarkul, said Russian military sources cited by RIA Novosti news agency. 


• Earlier it was thought the main body of the meteorite had hit the lake.  'The meteorite that passed over the Chelyabinsk region fell into a body of water 1km from the city of Chebarkul,' said a statement posted on the website of Chelyabinsk governor, Mikhail Yurevich.


• According to an unconfirmed report in Russia Today, the meteorite was intercepted by Russian air defense.


• The strike came on the same day that Asteroid 2012 DA14 is due to skim the orbit of the Earth tonight.  But astronomers say that it is probably just a coincidence -  Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society told MailOnline: 'As I understand it, the Russian meteorite(s) were travelling from east to west whereas 2012 DA14 will be travelling from north to south.'


• Pictures show a streak of smoke followed by several bright blasts of flames and eyewitnesses spoke of several devastating explosions.


• Mobile phones are only working intermittently and there were localised power cuts.


• According to RT.com, the Urals regional centre of the Emergency Ministry claimed it sent out a mass text message warning residents about a possible meteorite shower.  But eyewitnesses said they either never received it, or got the message after the explosion had already occurred.


Fear: First reports suggested that there had been a plane crash but officials confirmed it was one or more meteorites falling to Earth


Wounded: This woman suffered cuts across her face when the sonic boom of the meteor sent broken glass flying



The emergencies ministry said that 10,000 rescue workers had been dispatched to help the injured and locate those needing help.




• All schools and kindergartens were closed in Chelyabinsk region today.

Damaged: A zinc factory in Chelyabinsk was seen with a partially collapsed roof and walls in the morning after meteor pieces rained on the town

Moment of impact: A pair, seen on CCTV, cower from the impact as the window near them explodes

• The Russian Academy of Sciences is estimating the meteor weighed about 10 tons. 

• The academy said in a statement hours fall that the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered about 30-50 kilometres (18-32 miles) above ground.

• One eyewitness Gulnara Dudka, in her 20s, gave a dramatic account of the meteorite, telling how she feared 'doomsday' had arrived, reported the Siberian Times.

• Residents in one 19 storey block reported feeling the shockwaves of the explosions.

• The sounds of car alarms and breaking windows could be heard in the area, said a witness, and there were reports that the internet and mobile networks were temporarily down.

• The meteorite flew across the Russian sky from the direction of Kazakhstan, its trajectory going over southern Siberia, above the Tyumen, Kurgan and Sverdlovsk regions, said the head of the Urals regional branch of the Emergencies Ministry press service, Vadim Grebennikov.

• Officials stressed that radiation levels remained normal amid fears that one of dozens of nuclear facilities in the region could have been hit. 

Ruined: The sounds of car alarms and breaking windows could be heard in the area, said a witness, and there were reports that the internet and mobile networks were temporarily down

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist leader noted for vehement statements, said 'It's not meteors falling, it's the test of a new weapon by the Americans,' the RIA Novosti news agency reported. 'At the moment we are checking the territories and counting how many towns and settlements suffered from it.  'Preliminary information says the meteorite did not fall down but exploded in the air. '

Destroyed: The building of the local zinc plant badly damaged by a shockwave from a meteorite impact

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279020/Russian-meteorite-Moment-meteorite-exploded-doctors-treat-500-people-injured.html#ixzz2KzNUsU5a
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• The site of Friday's spectacular show is about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska, which 1908 was the site of the largest recorded explosion of a space object plunging to Earth. That blast, attributed to a comet or asteroid fragment, is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons; it leveled some 80 million trees.

• Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for leading world powers to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space.  "At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.

• Small pieces of space debris — usually parts of comets or asteroids — that are on a collision course with the Earth are called meteoroids. They become meteors when they enter the Earth'satmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere, but if they survive the frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are called meteorites.  Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.

read more at http://www.newsday.com/news/world/russian-meteor-shower-causes-blasts-injures-hundreds-1.4652395

for the following video... Published on Feb 15, 2013 Multiple meteors touched down in Central Russia in Ural region February 15th. These meteors caused injury from shattered windows, and broken class. It is believed these meteors broke off from the larger meteor 2012-Da14, which missed the earth by less than 30,000 miles the same day. Had Da-14 stuck earth, it would have destroyed everything within a 10 mile radius much like a nuclear bomb. In this video we see a building getting damaged.
for the following video... At 7:17 AM on the morning of June 30, 1908, a mysterious explosion occurred in the skies over Siberia. It was caused by the impact and breakup of a large meteorite, at an altitude roughly six kilometers in the atmosphere. Realistic pictures of the event are unavailable. However, Russian scientists collected eyewitness accounts of the event. I believe that we now know enough about large impacts to "decode" the subjective descriptions of the witnesses and create realistic views of this historic asteroid impact as seen from different distances.

Russia is no stranger to this type of event. A huge event happened in 1908 called the Tunguska Event.

New Near-Earth Asteroid February 2013. Danger or No Danger?

By above Youtube poster...

Uploaded by dutchsinse on Mar 4, 2012
thanks to pinksapphiret for getting this out on youtube:

Quote the article:TheExtinctionProtocol

Scientists are predicting that the asteroid 2012 DA14 has a good chance of colliding with earth in eleven months. 

Watch the skies in February 2013! 

According to RT, NASA has confirmed that the 60 meter (or 197 feet) asteroid, which was spotted by Spanish stargazers in February this year, has a good chance of colliding with earth. The scientists suggest confronting this asteroid with either big guns or, more strangely, with paint. 

The problem with either option is that there is no time to build a spaceship for the operation. A spaceship could either shoot the asteroid down or simply crash into it -- this would either break it into pieces or throw it off course. 

NASA expert David Dunham suggested: "We could paint it." The paint would change the asteroid's ability to reflect sunlight, alter its spin and change its temperature. However, even taking the asteroid off course could be dangerous when it returns in 2056, according to Aleksandr Devaytkin the head of the observatory in Russia's Pulkovo, as told to Izvestia in Russia recently.

The asteroid's closest approach to earth is scheduled for 15 February 2013, when they predict that the distance between it and earth will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact. 

However, NASA's David Dunham did say: "The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most parts of it will never reach the planet's surface." But theories are that if the entire asteroid did crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia.

So keep your head down and watch the skies. "

March 2 2012 , 19:55   |   Science   |   Artem Kuibida4

The Americans offered to paint the asteroid, and Russian - to blow up

NASA experts with Russian colleagues decide what to do with potentially dangerous for the Earth's celestial body - the 60-meter asteroid 2012 DA14Planet Earth. Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image

NASA experts have recognized that asteroid 2012 DA14, Spanish Open a week ago, astronomers can fall to Earth. The fall may occur after February 2013 will change the orbit of its flight. This statement was made by Dr. David Dunham, director of projects for the Study of NASA deep space, speaking March 1 at the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM).

- Due to the interaction with the Earth by gravity trajectory of its flight will be greatly changed, it must be well calculated, in order to understand how big a threat of collision with the following approximation of the Earth - says Dunham. - Maybe an asteroid will fall apart in our orbit around a lot of tiny pieces of it break away or a few large pieces and burned. Necessary to carry out its spectral analysis, then we can determine the type of asteroid, its mineral structure, which will assume his behavior in the atmosphere and methods of influence on him to prevent a possible threat.

NASA experts agree that if we consider the convergence of the Earth 2012 DA14 c in February next year, when the asteroid is on us only 29 thousand miles, then take things too late. on the design, development and preparation for the launch of a special spacecraft that could somehow affect the celestial body, it would take at least two years.

Proven systems to counter asteroids do not - this kind of development there are still only in preliminary design. For example, in Russia, projects satellite-killers trained in the Makeev Rocket Center and NPO. Lavochkin. In addition, we have no weapons against satellites, we have no system for tracking threats from space and learn about them in advance. The case of asteroid 2012 DA14 indicative in this sense: according to Secretary of the Expert Council on Space Sciences for Threats Sergei Naroenkova, the object is flying in its present orbit is not the first year (estimated, about three years), and places its trajectory almost overlaps with the trajectory our planet. But to discover an asteroid was only last week.

- If the object will fly to us from the sun, then we are unlikely to be ready to reflect, - said Alexander Devyatkin, deputy director of the Pulkovo Observatory. - In the daytime we can not detect an asteroid because of the huge background of the sky. More reliable in preventing the threats will be possible only when the spacecraft will be launched for continuous monitoring of Earth-threatening objects.

In February of next year 2012 DA14 can fly past the planet and the encounter with her ​​in one of the following turns. By this turn of events, scientists are encouraged to prepare in advance.- The easiest way to do classically - to destroy an asteroid hitting his body, or other device with a nuclear charge - says Robert Farquhar, head of the NASA mission to Pluto, Mercury, developer of the program mission, NEAR and MESSENGER. - An asteroid flies with great speed and in a collision with a massive spaceship would fly just under the force of its own kinetic energy. But now we are dealing with a small asteroid - 60 m in diameter, so the calculation must be very precise.

Dunham offers an asteroid repaint.

- The paint will change the reflectivity of the asteroid. Because of this, solar power will begin to act differently on it and change the trajectory of the body - he said.

Russian scientists consider painting the asteroids effective, but not the most effective measure, favoring the elimination of more radical methods.

- The idea to paint an asteroid of this size is technically feasible, but not radical. This will change the trajectory of its rotation, but almost certainly within a few decades, the threat of a collision will be even greater - Eismont says Nathan, senior researcher at the Institute of Space Research. - It is necessary to know very well what reflective, he had become and what not to do worse. We should not forget that during the flight of asteroids tend to rotate and the colored side is not always facing the sun, which causes additional problems.

According Devyatkina to effectively meet threats from outer space should be as soon as possible to create a system for monitoring and multiple spacecraft. 

source: IZVESTA

No, asteroid 2012 DA14 will not hit us next year

For the tl;dr crowd, let’s get this out of the way right away: asteroid 2012 DA14 is almost certainlynot going to hit the Earth next February. And by "almost certainly", I mean it: the odds of an impact are so low they are essentially zero. This does not rule out an impact at some future date, but for now we’re safe.

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So what’s the story?

A small near-Earth asteroid was discovered in late February by astronomers at the Observatorio Astronómico de La Sagra in Spain, less than two weeks ago. Designated 2012 DA14, it’s estimated to be about 45 meters (150 feet) in diameter, and has an orbit that is similar to Earth’s.

Its orbit is an inclined ellipse, tilted a bit compared to Earth’s orbit around the Sun (the positions of Earth and DA14 are shown for August of 2012 — I picked that randomly to make the orbits clear), and it spends most of its time well away from our planet. However, the path of the rock does bring it somewhat close to the Earth twice per orbit, or about every six months. The last time it passed us was on February 16 – two weeks ago — when it was about 2.5 million km (1.5 million miles) away, equal to about 6 times the distance to the Moon. That’s usually about the scale of these encounters — it misses us by quite a margin.

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February 2013: a close shave

Next year, on February 15, 2013, DA14 will actually get pretty close to Earth. It will pass us at a distance of about 27,000 km (17,000 miles) — well beneath many of our own orbiting satellites! To the best of my knowledge, this is the closest pass of a decent-sized asteroid ever seen before the actual pass itself.

However, let’s again be very clear: it will miss. In astronomical terms, 27,000 km is pretty close, but in real human terms it’s a clean miss.

[UPDATE: The rt.com article I linked below has changed substantively since I posted my own article here. They have attributed their quotations more clearly, and have taken out most of the more breathless rhetoric. I applaud them for doing so, though I wish they had been more clear in the first place.]

Unsurprisingly, though very irritatingly, I’ve seen a lot of websites writing about this as if the asteroid will hit. For example, rt.com has a very confused article about DA14 claiming it will somehow both miss us and hit us:

The rock’s closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). [...] With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact.

Blechh. They write that in a way to make an impact seem likely, but that’s not the case at all! I’ve seen several other websites making similarly contradictory or confused claims (Note:I originally included this SFBay article as an example. It’s not confused, but by using the phrase "potentially fateful day" it struck me as exaggerating the fear). The rt.com article even comes right out and says "NASA confirms… [DA14] has a good chance of colliding with Earth". This is simply not true. I’ll note they don’t actually give a reference to that, so it’s not clear who, if anyone, actually said that, or where they got that information. Either way, it’s wrong.

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The fuzzy future

So we’re safe for now. But what about future passes?

That’s harder to say. Predicting where an asteroid will be at some future time depends on a lot of things, including how good the observations are now and how long we’ve been watching it. When we observe an asteroid with a telescope, we can measure its position, but not with perfect accuracy. The Earth’s atmosphere blurs the image a bit, and other factors make it impossible to get an exact measurement. So we observe it many times, over as long a period as possible, to hammer down those uncertainties.

There will always be some small amount of fuzziness to the orbit of an asteroid, though, and the farther ahead in the future you look the bigger that fuzziness gets. For next year, we know the orbit of DA14 well enough to know it’ll miss, but for future orbits it’s harder to say.

As things stand, right now the JPL website lists the next close pass as February 2020, but we don’t know the orbit well enough at this moment to know how close that pass will be^*. As things stand, the odds of an impact even then are very, very low (like, 1 in 100,000 — less than your odds of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime). We can’t technically rule it out just yet because, again, the orbit isn’t known well enough to look that far into the future. Of course, astronomers are observing the asteroid right now, and will continue to do so. No doubt we’ll have better orbital information pretty soon.

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Keep watching the skies!

So again, because I can’t say this strongly enough: asteroid 2012 DA14 is not an impact threat for February 2013. However, we definitely need to keep our eyes on this guy to see if it poses a threat at some future date. If it does, then you can be sure you’ll be hearing about it from me, and from other websites too. But make sure you find reliable websites. Too many are too ready to breathlessly report this as doomsday when it’s anything but.

So, at least for February 2013, we can safely say:

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^* I’ll note the European NEO-DyS group uses different mathematical techniques, and they don’t even list that date as a near pass. Instead, they say it’ll be six months later, in September. Again, this shows that given our current observations of DA14, predicting its position that far in the future is very uncertain.

Source: Discover Magazine