What happened
On the night of September 24–25, 2002, at about 1:50 a.m. local time, a very bright fireball flew over the Vitim River basin in the northeastern part of Irkutsk Oblast. Residents of the Bodaybo area described a flash that lit up the night, as well as thunder and a shock wave. U.S. military satellites recorded the flash at an altitude of about 62 km and tracked the object down to about 30 km, where it broke up. In 2002–2003 several research expeditions set out into the taiga. At the site they found felled trees and fine particles of matter, but neither a crater nor any larger meteorite fragments.
Witnesses
Residents of the Bodaybo area and Mamsko-Chuysky District; the flash was recorded by U.S. military satellites.
Explanations and hypotheses
Researchers agree that it was a meteoroid that exploded in the atmosphere. Energy estimates, however, vary widely: from 0.2–0.5 kilotons according to satellite data to several kilotons in some Russian analyses. The absence of larger fragments suggests that the object was fragile and disintegrated almost completely. Unconventional hypotheses put forward after the event have not been confirmed.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.