Divers recover piece from exploding meteorite

Divers working at a Russian lake have recovered a half-ton chunk of the space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk earlier this year. The object plunged into Lake Chebarkul in central Russia on 15 February, leaving a 6m-wide hole in the ice.

Scientists say that it is the largest fragment of the meteorite yet found. More than 1,000 people were injured when a 17m, 10,000-ton space rock burned up over Central Russia, breaking windows and rocking buildings.

Live footage showed a team pull out a five-foot-long rock from the lake after first wrapping it in a special covering and placing it on a metal sheet while it was still underwater.

The fragment was then pulled ashore and placed on top of a scale for weighing, an operation that quickly went wrong. The rock broke up into at least three large pieces as it was lifted from the ground with the help of levers and ropes.

Then the scale itself broke, the moment it hit the 570kg (1,255lb) mark. Dr Caroline Smith, curator of meteorites at London‘s Natural History Museum, confirmed that the object was a meteorite from characteristic features known as fusion crust and regmaglypts, which are obvious in images.

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Park Sae-jin swatchsjp@ajunews.com