In light of the meteorite blast that sent shock waves through the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk on Friday, leaving more than a thousand people injured, Prime MinisterDmitry Medvedevtasked his deputy,Dmitry Rogozin, with proposing ways to predict and prevent disasters from space.

Rogozin plans to give Medvedev an “objective picture” of Friday’s blast, which caused an estimated 1 billion rubles ($33 million) in damage in the Chelyabinsk region. He will also create “proposals on future possibilities for the country to determine the danger of objects approaching the Earth and prevent [them],” he said Friday on Twitter.

Rogozin on Friday reiterated his call from 2011 for an “international initiative” to create a “system” to prevent space threats, he told Interfax. Neither Russia nor the United States can prevent objects from crashing into the Earth from space, he said.

Rogozin said “the essence of our idea consists of joining the intellectual and technological efforts of industrial nations,” he tweeted Sunday, citing Russian, U.S., Chinese and European industries as examples.

The meteor, 17 meters wide and weighing 10 kilotons, had an explosive force of half a megaton, NASA said. It broke up at an altitude of between 30 and 50 kilometers above the Earth, according to the Russian Academy of Sciences.

By comparison, the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima during World War II had an explosive force of 15 kilotons, but it was detonated just 2,000 feet over the city.