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Update: Meteor Explodes Over Russia, 1,000 Injured

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Updated at 11:53 a.m.

A 10 ton meteorite entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia’s southern Chelyabinsk region Friday morning at 33,000 mph, exploding an estimated 18 – 32 miles above ground. CNN is reporting that the resulting blast resulted in 500 injuries (Update: Now upgraded to nearly 1,000), most of which are said to be non-life-threatening.

The European Space Agency says their experts can “confirm no link between meteor incidents in Russia and asteroid 2012DA14” expected to flyby Earth tonight. NASA will be hosting a live stream event tracking the larger, 150-foot asteroid starting at 2 p.m. EST.

As of 7:50 a.m. EST NASA has not issued a statement on the incident in Russia, sending the following Tweet:


Our friends at The Atlantic Wire have been collecting some impressive videos of the incident. See below Update: Video was pulled by user, you can check out this .gif instead: 

Another angle:

You can get a sense of how loud the explosion was in this video:

Mark Micheli writes Excellence in Government’s Promising Practices blog and serves as the program manager of the Government Business Council. Prior to his current roles, he worked as a management consultant on national security and emergency management issues with the US Treasury Department. He’s worked as a political research analyst, a reporter for the Des Moines Register at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland and is a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs. He studied at Drake University where he has degrees in Magazine Journalism, Political Science and History.

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