MOSCOW, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Russia needs about 2 billion U.S. dollars to build a working anti-meteorite defense system, a Russian scientist said Monday.
"Beside a network of ground-base telescopes we need some space-based platform. For all that, we need 58 billion rubles (some 2 billion dollars) for 10 years," said Lidia Rykhlova, head of department at the Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The draft federal program of creating an anti-meteor shield has been approved by Russian space agency Roscosmos and submitted to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, she said.
The project gained urgency after a meteorite burst into the sky over Russia's Urals region on Friday and burned up before landing, leaving some 1,200 people injured in its explosion.
According to Rykhlova, if the bolide had not exploded in atmosphere but hit the ground, the power of the explosion could be equal to 500 kilotons of TNT.
Scientists have found fragments of the meteorite, which broke into approximately seven large pieces, one of which fell into Lake Chebarkul, some 150 km away from Chelyabinsk.