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Chelyabinsk Plans Meteorite Monument

The Chelyabinsk region administration has announced a competition to design a monument and logo commemorating the 10,000-ton meteor that exploded over the area earlier this month.

Next week, the government will start accepting sketches that will be vetted by a panel and then voted on by Internet users, a spokesperson for the regional government told Interfax on Tuesday.

Local authorities will decide where to place the monument, and the logo will be made available free of charge to entrepreneurs for use on booklets, calendars, magnets and other goods.

The Feb. 15 meteor, which NASA said measured 49 meters by 55 meters and released about 30 times as much energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, injured over 1,500 and caused about 1 billion rubles ($30 million) in damage.

It was the largest reported meteor event since 1908, when a space rock exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, flattening an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers of taiga.

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