How did Russia's early warning system miss the meteorite? Nuclear missile-detecting radars never saw it coming

The 10,000-ton lump of space rock exploded with the force of 25 atom bombs over the city of Chelyabinsk on Friday morning

Russian Nuclear Forces Project experts explain that the country's early warning system was never meant to track meteorites

Questions are being asked as to why Russia's powerful missile defence radar systems did not detect the meteorite that exploded over the country on Friday morning.

Almost 1,200 were injured when the untracked lump of space rock exploded over the Urals, with the debris narrowly missing a direct and devastating hit on the industrial city of Chelyabinsk.

In the aftermath of the impact Russian politicians called on the world's powerful nations to urgently develop technology to spot asteroids and meteorites that threaten our planet.



Scroll down for video



Flash of light: The debris narrowly missed a direct and devastating hit on Chelyabinks, which has a population of 1.13million, but nevertheless spread panic through its streets as the sky above lit up with a blinding flash

But with Russia having one of the most high tech early warning systems of any nation on Earth, many are wondering why the nuclear superpower was not able to detect the incoming object itself.

Experts from the Russian Nuclear Forces Project have attempted to explain how the rock, estimated by Nasa to have been 55ft-wide and weighing some 10,000 tons, could have slipped through the net.

It is estimated to have exploded above the Ural moutains with a force equivalent to about 500kilotons - nearly 25 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

The group, which offers definitive information on the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal and intercontinental weapons systems, published an image how far into space the country's radar systems can penetrate.

The Russian-based group claims that despite the size of the object, early warning radars 'never had a chance' - particularly since they were never designed to detect rocks hurtling in from outer space.

How Russia's missile defence systems missed it: The radar fans of the Russian early warning system are plotted here on Google Earth, with the suspected trajectory of the incoming meteorite shown in green

HOW SOLAR POWERED ASTEROID BUSTING LASERS COULD SAVE US

Sun-powered lasers could protect Earth from any more asteroids judged to be flying too close.

U.S. researchers have outlined a plan for solar powered space defences which could vaporise an asteroid as big as the one which flew past Earth on Friday night in 60 minutes.

The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun, the researchers claim.

After Earth's close shave with asteroid 2012 DA14 on Friday night - and the unexpected meteorite explosion which injured 1,200 Russians that morning - attention has turned to technology which could be used to defend our planet.

Academics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, have outlined a plan to destroy any before they can destroy us.

They say their concept, dubbed Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, or DE-STAR, is 'a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets.'

Described as a 'directed energy orbital defence system', DE-STAR is designed to harness the vast power of the Sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams.

These can then be aimed at any threatening-looking asteroids to destroy them before they can get too close.

As can be seen from the image, and an accompanying Google Earth file posted on the project's website, Russia's radar systems ignore the Earth's curvature and scan fan-shaped areas extending past our planet's atmosphere.

Assuming the meteorite followed a straight trajectory as it collided with Russia, with an entry angle of about 15 degrees, a project researcher writes: 'As can be seen from the picture, the meteorite was out of the field of view of the Pechora radar and it was below the horizon as seen from Moscow, so the Don-2N radar could not see it either.

'The Dnepr radar in Mishelevka might have detected the meteorite if it looked up, but it didn't - as an early-warning radar its mission is to search the narrow strip of space just above the horizon, which a ballistic missile would cross if it ever comes.

'They don't (and shouldn't) much care about anything else. These radars are not supposed to search the entire sky on a continuous basis - it would be a waste of energy and would decrease the effective detection range.

'An early-warning radar could see objects at higher elevations (up to 34.5 degrees in the case of Dnepr) and does so if it is asked to track a satellite.

'But you have to ask and since nobody saw the meteorite coming nobody did.'

The researcher adds that the Google Earth file also includes the fan of the Krasnoyarsk radar, built to close the 'Eastern gap' in Soviet-era Russia's early warning radar coverage, but that would have also missed the meteorite.

So there is nothing wrong with Russia's missile defence systems, the blog post says, and the reason the meteorite was not detected was simple - it was not an ICBM.

Shattered: The city of Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow and close to the Kazakhstan border, took the brunt of the impact, with windows across the city shattered and some 1,200 injuries recorded

Ice hole: Experts have been scouring a 50-foot hole in a frozen lake on the outskirts of Chelyabinsk believed to have been smashed open when the burning lump of space rock slammed into the Earth

The researcher concludes on a positive note for the safety of the world, given the number of nuclear weapons still poised in the arsenals of both Russia and the U.S.

'It still leaves an interesting question,' the researcher writes. 'What happens if you see a 500-kt explosion on (or above) your soil and have no idea what it is and where it came from?

'I guess we know now what the Russians do - they would rush to upload their dashboard camera videos to YouTube.'

