Day: September 25, 2002

An object from space, possibly as much as 300 feet in diameter, explodes in mid-air at night over the mountainous region near Bodaybo, a village in Irkutsk, Siberia, showering the land below with its fragments and destroying nearly 40 square miles of forest. Neither debris nor the actual “impact” site of the airborne explosion are discovered until 2003, when an expedition discovers the destroyed forest land, comparing the sight to the infamous 1908 Tunguska impact zone. Traces of tritium and slightly radioactive cesium and cobalt are discovered surrounding the impact area, possibly indicating a comet nucleus that broke up in Earth’s atmosphere. Despite the size of the object, it was not detected before its near-impact with Earth.