NASA has tracked the dust of a meter that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February. According to the study, dust from the Feb. 15 explosion stayed in Earth's atmosphere for three months.

The meteor was the size of a bus. When it hit the Russian city, windows shattered, car alarms went off and over 1,000 people were injured.

A large dust plume rose after the meteor crash and entered Earth's atmosphere. The cloud contained hundreds of tons of various materials. A team, led by Nick Gorkavyi, NASA Goddard atmospheric physicist, tracked the dust to monitor its path around the planet using NASA's Suomi NPP satellite.

"Today, our models allow us to precisely trace the bolide and understand its evolution as it moves around the globe," Gorkavyi said in a statement.

The February meteor detonated 15 miles (24 kilometers) above Chelyabinsk, setting off a burst of energy 30 times larger than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.  It weighed 11,000 metric tons.

Three and a half hours after the meteor exploded, dust was found 25 miles high (40 kilometers) in the atmosphere, traveling east at a rate of 190 mph (306 km/h).

Four days after the explosion, the highest part of the dust plume traveled fully around Earth's northern hemisphere.

"Indeed, we saw the formation of a new dust belt in Earth's stratosphere, and achieved the first space-based observation of the long-term evolution of a bolide plume," Gorkavyi said in a statement.

After three months of study, there was a still a noticeable dust belt circling Earth.

The study also gave researchers information on how various particles react to Earth's atmosphere. Light particles maintain a certain speed and altitude which correlates with predicted wind velocities. On the other hand, heavy particles move slower as they approach Earth in an area with low wind speeds.

More research will examine whether meteor debris affects cloud formation in the mesosphere and stratosphere.

Despite its travel, the dust plume was not especially thick. Other sources, such as volcanoes, add many more particles to Earth's stratosphere.