Russian meteor largest in over 100 years

Baltimore, MD - The meteor that lit up the skies over Russia last week is reported to be the largest meteor in more than a century NASA says.

New estimates from NASA says the meteorite that exploded last week was 55 feet in diameter weighing around 10,000 tons composed on a rocky material. Scientist have collected fragments across Russia as the meteorite exploded over the Ural Mountain region in central Russia.

NASA says the meteor released 470 kilotons of energy during its explosion nearly 33 seconds after its arrival in our atmosphere. This would have been the equivalent of 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The 2013 Russian meteorite is the largest since the 1908 Tunguska, Siberia meteorite.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

Over 1,000 people were injured and hundreds of houses and buildings were damaged by the sonic blast generated by the explosion. The meteor's explosion resulted in damages to the tune of $33 million and created panic waves across the region.

Crews will continue to search for more debris to continue it's investigation.