JEM-EUSO: Meteor and nuclearite observations

Abstract

Meteor and fireball observations are important to derive the inventory and physical characterization of the population of small solar system bodies orbiting in the vicinity of the Earth. After decades of ground-based activities, the proposed JEM-EUSO mission has some chances to become the first operational space-based platform having among its scientific objectives the observation of fireball and meteor events. The observing strategy developed to detect these phenomena, which are eminently "slow" events with respect to the extremely energetic cosmic ray events which are the primary objective of the mission, can prove to be very suitable also for the possible detection of nuclearites, an exciting possibility which enhances the overall scientific rationale of JEM-EUSO, and suggests that the planned observation of slow events may be very interesting in many respects.

EUSO@TurLab: An experimental replica of ISS orbits

“…Figure 1 shows the results of two simulations recreating the expected counts: a) & b) crossing Central Italy, with a series of urban areas, of different extension, alternated with dark rural areas and the sea; c) & d) during a passage over one of the Aeolian islands, i.e., an insulated and very localised light source. The result is comparable to real measurements obtained with the BABY balloon [6], in which the luminosity level increases by 1-2 orders of [7]. The vertical axis shows the detected counts per GTU on the full instrument.…”

“…Figure 2 shows the typical light profile expected at JEM-EUSO by a meteor of magnitude M = 2 obtained by a dedicated simulation code [7]. Figure 3 shows the typical light profile of a 2 · 10 20 eV EAS detected by JEM-EUSO.…”

Ultra-high energy cosmic ray detector TUS: preliminary results of the first year of measurements

“…These measurements demonstrate the possibility of usage of EECR fluorescent detector for measurements and study of meteors. This confirms the strategy and estimations made for the next orbital detector for meteor study, discussed in [38,39]. It was shown that JEM-EUSO telescope has the capability to observe meteors down to magnitude M = +7.…”

Mini-EUSO flight software and operations on ISS

“…SQM is a hypothesised state of matter based on strange quarks which is a dark matter candidate [4]. Whilst it has never been detected, its interaction in the atmosphere would cause a UV trail, detectable by Mini-EUSO, as discussed in [5]. With its large exposure, Mini-EUSO will be capable of detecting SQM, or setting new upper limits on the flux of SQM for a null detection.…”