Fireballs reported in skies above Cuba and California Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer, said the centre's telescopes did not pick up the object. The reports came hours after a meteor exploded over Russia and injured more than 1,000 people and an asteroid passed relatively close to Earth. The 55 foot wide rock, said by Nasa to have a mass of 10,000 tonnes, lit up the sky above the Urals region on Friday morning, causing shockwaves that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes in an event unprecedented in modern times. Nasa estimated that the energy released as the meteor's disintigrated in the atmosphere was 500 kilotons, around 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It entered the atmosphere at 44,000 miles per hour, taking 32.5 seconds to break up at an altitude of around 15 miles above the earth's surface. The resulting explosion created a shockwave that blew out windows and set of car alarms in Chelyabinsk two and a half minutes later.