[meteorite-list] Divers Resume Work at Chelyabinsk Meteorite Fall Site

[Ron Baalke]

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_22/Divers-resume-work-at-Chelyabinsk-meteorite-fall-site-5137/

Divers resume work at Chelyabinsk meteorite fall site
Voice of Russia
March 22, 2014

Work of divers has resumed on Lake Chebarkul at the Chelyabinsk meteorite 
fall site. The operation was suspended last Tuesday because of a strong 
wind, frost of 15 degrees and silt in the water that made search below 
the depth of nine meters practically impossible.

Divers worked very intensively last weekend, the director-general of the 
Aleut service for special works, which had won the tender to raise meteorite 
fragments, Nikolai Murzin, told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

Divers together with scientists completed mapping of anomalies on the 
bottom.

This Saturday, divers have begun to examine the bottom with special probes.

Murzin said that this season they were to examine 12 anomalies in two 
zones of about 300 and 50 sq m.

One of the anomalies indicates there may be a meteorite fragment weighing 
several tonnes, a scientist at the Geophysics Institute of the Ural branch 
of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Arkady Ovcharenko, has told Itar-Tass.

The largest fragment raised last year weighed 570 kilogrammes. It was 
found near the main anomaly, the scientist said.

The Chelyabinsk meteorite came into Earth's atmosphere on February 15, 
2013, at about 07:10 Moscow time, with a powerful explosion in the atmosphere 
at an altitude of 30-50 km, which was seen by hundreds of thousands of 
people in the Ural region and northern Kazakhstan. Many fragments fell 
onto the Chelyabinsk Region. Largest fragments fell in the area of Lake 
Chebarkul, 78 km west of Chelyabinsk.