Powerful Bering Sea Fireball Spotted from Space in NASA Photo.
The explosion was the second most powerful airburst of the 21st century. Satellite photos give a striking look at the second most powerful meteor explosion of the 21st century.
On Dec. 18, 2018, an incoming space rock detonated 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the Bering Sea's icy waters, generating 173 kilotons of energy. That's about 10 times more than the amount unleashed by the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II, NASA officials said.
Only one impact event since 2000 was more powerful — the February 2013 airburst over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, which produced a shockwave that injured more than 1,200 people. (Most of those folks were hurt by shards of flying glass from broken windows.)
Unlike the Chelyabinsk event, nobody on the ground saw or recorded the Bering Sea meteor, as far as we know. That's a consequence of the remote location; the Bering Sea lies between far eastern Russian and Alaska. But some sharp eyes in the sky did preserve the blast for posterity.
