The Chelyabinsk fireball was 9 times as energetic as the next largest in NASA’s catalogue
The blast over Chelyabinsk on 15 February 2013 released about 441 kt of TNT equivalent. Second place: a fireball over the Bering Sea on 18 December 2018, 49 kt. NASA estimates can be revised.
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The largest published value stands far above the others. Its rank here does not prove that it was the largest fireball on Earth throughout that period.
Bars share one scale. The source values and their units are listed below.
- Estimated fireball energy kilotons TNT, estimate
441 (2013-02-15T03:20:26Z)
- Estimated fireball energy kilotons TNT, estimate
49 (2018-12-18T23:48:18Z)
- Estimated fireball energy kilotons TNT, estimate
33 (2009-10-08T02:57:14Z)
Sort 1073 published NASA/JPL CNEOS records by approximate impact energy. Snapshot 2026-10-06; coverage 1988-04-15–2026-09-15. This is an incomplete sensor-report catalogue, not all atmospheric impacts.
NASA/JPL CNEOS, U.S. Government sensors, API v1.2. UTC time of peak brightness. Total impact energy is an empirical estimate, not energy of a ground strike or damage. Optical energy converted from 10¹⁰ J into J. Altitude refers to peak brightness. Missing values are not zero; many fireballs are unreported, so catalogue record counts do not estimate real incidence or its trend. CNEOS does not independently verify parameters. Event-level uncertainty/provenance is limited; speeds are not used to infer new orbits or interstellar origins.
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