Yep. It’s about 90 kilometres up, at that stage, travelling at 17.5 kilometres per second.

 

Using the different camera positions, scientists have pinpointed the exact position at which the meteor entered the atmosphere. And by tracking the speed and angle of the shadows that the meteor casts, they’ve calculated its velocity. Together this is enough to tract back the asteroid’s path from deep space. Although the asteroid and Earth orbits are different durations and at angles to one another, their clockwork regularity means that we were bound to collide. So this shows speeded up, obviously, three and a half hours, the last three and a half hours of the life of this little rascal. 

 

Yeah, it’s nice to see it from the asteroid’s point of view. The thing to remember is that this asteroid has been in its orbit, going around the Sun, roughly once every two years. We believe…

 

Minding its own business.

 

Absolutely.

 

And unfortunately on February 15 it found a planet in the way. Sure enough, at all the 20 hours the meteor entered our atmosphere above Siberia. On this path and at this time, it was Chelyabinsk that took the full impact. But could there have been another scenario? The meteorite landed at a latitude of 55 degrees north. Had it arrived just a few hours later, we would have been directly in its flight path.