Russian emergency officials said the meteor was destroyed after it partially burned in the lower atmosphere over the Ural district.
However, the US space agency Nasa said the meteor weighed 10, 000 tonnes before entering the atmosphere, and released about 500 kilotons of energy.
However, the US space agency Nasa said the meteor was 17m (55ft) wide and weighed 10, 000 tonnes before entering the atmosphere, releasing about 500 kilotons of energy.
The U.S. space agency, NASA, said the meteor released nearly 500 kilotons of energy, about 33 times more than the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
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Actually, while the top speed of a Viper reportedly is about 200 mph, Russian authorities today said that the meteor came in at a speed of about 30, 000 to 45, 000 mph.
"You can see a few almost every clear dark night if you look long enough, but periodically the Earth passes through a dense swarm of these particles which have only recently come from their parent comet, giving what we call a meteor shower, " he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration fielded calls about a meteor from Virginia to Maine, said agency spokeswoman Arlene Salac.
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In Russia, dozens of fragments of the meteor hit the ground, officials said, and search teams set out looking for meteorites outside Chelyabinsk.
Government plans to bolster detection and mitigation capabilities include an infrared sensor that would orbit Venus, as well as a laser system or other method to deflect any threatening meteor away from Earth, they said.
"In terms of things we have observed, this is the largest since Tunguska, " Brown said, referring to the suspected meteor that flattened a Siberian forest in 1908.
Dr. Smith said there was no connection between the meteor event in Russia and the 130, 000-ton asteroid that harmlessly passed about 17, 000 miles from Earth on Friday.
Most of the meteor burned up before pieces hit the ground, scientists said.
"The meteor was probably about the size of an SUV, " said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif.
The European Space Agency said on their Twitter page Friday that the Russian meteor was not part of the larger meteor approaching Earth later this afternoon.
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Mr Putin said he had thanked God that no big fragments of the meteor - which was thought to be made of iron and travelling at some 30km (19 miles) per second - had fallen in populated areas.
Roskosmos, Russia's space agency, said it was impossible to track objects falling as fast as the meteor.
Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Russian Emergency Ministry said in a statement.
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The space agency said observers at latitudes north of 51 degrees south should be able to see the meteor shower.
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Meteor watchers can expect to see 60 to 200 meteors an hour streak across the sky, NASA said.
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The meteor was several yards in diameter and weighed around 10 metric tons, Russia's Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
"There are different times of the year when you can see meteor showers but August is normally the best time because that's when the skies are clearest, " said a spokesman for the National Trust, which published a guide to the top sites to witness the event in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
After a surprising meteor shower sent meteorites crashing on sonic speeds in the Ural mountains of Russia, injuring thousands, the Russian military said Wednesday it will develop technology to shoot them down before the hit Earth.
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