Satellite & Space Missions

Biography

Biography: Victor S Seleznev

Abstract

Researches are dedicated to the identification of parameters of meteoroid “Chelyabinsk” exploded on 15 February 2013. The explosion took place over the territory of Chelyabinsk region (Russia) in heavily populated area (Fig. 1). Bolide was caught on many surveillance cameras, dashboard cameras and mobile phones which videos were quickly spread all over the world through the Internet. Using these videos we defined the trajectory and traverse speed of meteoroid from the moment of first visible light and till the moment of disruption. At the moment of explosion acoustical wave set and when it reached the Earth's surface, it formed long-period (T~10-15sec) surface seismic wave registered at the distance of 1000 km. Waves of such type appear under nuclear and thermonuclear explosions in the air. There are methods to determine the energy of high-altitude explosion under the amplitudes of surface waves at a distance of it. We used the records of broadband seismic stations and at times of entrance this wave we determined exact explosion time – 03:20:34 UTC. According to amplitudes of the surface wave we estimated explosion energy in hypothesis that it was the point source similar to the altitude thermonuclear explosion. The energy of explosion according to data of 5 seismic stations was about 70 kt-140 kt (on the average, 100 kt) in the trinitrotoluol equivalent.