O.G. Gladysheva. Disintegration of the Chelyabinsk cosmic body. //Planet Space Sci. Volume 178, article id. 104709. 2019. doi:10.1016/j.pss.2019.104709

Abstract. A cosmic body entered the Earth's atmosphere on the morning of February 15, 2013 and disintegrated explosively over the Chelyabinsk region (Russia). This airburst is considered in the framework of a model describing the motion of cosmic bodies in the atmosphere. The results of these calculations have made it possible to propose an alternative scenario of the Chelyabinsk event. The Chelyabinsk object could be a combination of two different merged objects, a larger one (mass of ~10⁷ kg) with a high water content and low density, resembling a comet, and a smaller one (mass of ~10⁵ kg) with characteristics of a stony asteroid. It was calculated that the effective heat of destruction (z) for a comet with a density of 300–700 kg·m^-3 corresponds to (3–5)·10⁵ J·kg^-1. Parameter z takes into account the fragmentation processes in the comet’s substance.