Meteor Shower Forecasting in Near-Earth Space

Moorhead, Althea V.; Egal, Auriane; Brown, Peter; Moser, Danielle E.; Cooke, William J.

doi:10.2514/1.a34416

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…MEM specifically models the sporadic component of the meteoroid environment, that is, those meteoroids not affiliated with a meteor shower. For particles <0.5 cm, less than 10% of the net fraction of impactors hitting Earth are from showers (Moorhead et al, 2017). Thus, showers are considered by the authors of MEM to be a minor contributor to spacecraft risk and are not included.…”

Section: Memmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteoroid Impacts as a Source of Bennu's Particle Ejection Events

et al. 2020

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Asteroid (101955) Bennu, a near‐Earth object with a primitive carbonaceous chondrite‐like composition, was observed by the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security‐Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS‐REx) spacecraft to undergo multiple particle ejection events near perihelion between December 2018 and February 2019. The three largest events observed during this period, which all occurred 3.5 to 6 hr after local noon, placed numerous particles <10 cm on temporary orbits around Bennu. Here we examine whether these events could have been produced by sporadic meteoroid impacts using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Meteoroid Engineering Model 3.0. Most projectiles that impact Bennu come from nearly isotropic or Jupiter‐family comets and have evolved toward the Sun by Poynting‐Robertson drag. We find that 7,000‐J impacts on Bennu occur with a biweekly cadence near perihelion, with a preference to strike in the late afternoon (~6 pm local time). This timing matches observations. Crater scaling laws also indicate that these impact energies can reproduce the sizes and masses of the largest observed particles, provided the surface has the cohesive properties of weak, porous materials. Bennu's ejection events could be caused by the same kinds of meteoroid impacts that created the Moon's asymmetric debris cloud observed by the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). Our findings also suggest that fewer ejection events should take place as Bennu moves further away from the Sun, a result that can be tested with future observations.

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Section: Memmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteoroid Impacts as a Source of Bennu's Particle Ejection Events

et al. 2020

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“…We anticipate that the primary application of our numerical approximations will be in environment models. For instance, the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) issues meteor shower forecasts (Moorhead et al 2019b) that have been recently updated to incorporate the Staubach et al (1997) treatment of gravitational focusing. We have found that spacecraft at high altitudes, such as those in geostationary orbit, often pass near the anti-radiant of active meteor showers and were thus predicted to encounter brief but intense spikes in the impactor flux.…”

Section: Meteoroid Environment Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

Moorhead

Clements

Vida

2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The number density and flux of a meteoroid stream is enhanced near a massive body due to the phenomenon known as gravitational focusing. The greatest enhancement occurs directly opposite the massive body from the stream radiant: as an observer approaches this location, the degree of focusing is unbound for a perfectly collimated stream. However, real meteoroid streams exhibit some dispersion in radiant and speed that will act to eliminate this singularity. In this paper, we derive an analytic approximation for this smoothing that can be used in meteoroid environment models and is based on real measurements of meteor shower radiant dispersion.

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“…Since the beginning of semi-regular operations in December 2018, the GMN recorded a total of ∼ 220, 000 meteors for which orbits were computed (up to mid-2021). Every night-time annual meteor shower of significance for the satellite impact hazard (Moorhead et al 2019) was observed by the GMN over that period.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Global Meteor Network -- Methodology and First Results

Vida,

Šegon,

Gural

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The Global Meteor Network (GMN) utilizes highly sensitive low-cost CMOS video cameras which run open-source meteor detection software on Raspberry Pi computers. Currently, over 450 GMN cameras in 30 countries are deployed.The main goal of the network is to provide long-term characterization of the radiants, flux, and size distribution of annual meteor showers and outbursts in the optical meteor mass range. The rapid 24-hour publication cycle the orbital data will enhance the public situational awareness of the near-Earth meteoroid environment. The GMN also aims to increase the number of instrumentally observed meteorite falls and the transparency of data reduction methods.A novel astrometry calibration method is presented which allows decoupling of the camera pointing from the distortion, and is used for frequent pointing calibrations through the night. Using wide-field cameras (88°× 48°) with a limiting stellar magnitude of +6.0 ± 0.5 at 25 frames per second, over 220,000 precise meteoroid orbits were collected since December 2018 until June 2021.The median radiant precision of all computed trajectories is 0.47°, 0.32°for ∼ 20% of meteors which were observed from 4+ stations, a precision sufficient to measure physical dispersions of meteor showers. All non-daytime annual established meteor showers were observed during that time, including five outbursts. An analysis of a meteorite-dropping fireball is presented which showed visible wake, fragmentation details, and several discernible fragments. It had spatial trajectory fit errors of only ∼40 m, which translated into the estimated radiant and velocity errors of 3 arc minutes and tens of meters per second.

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Meteor Shower Forecasting in Near-Earth Space

Cited by 20 publications

References 48 publications

Meteoroid Impacts as a Source of Bennu's Particle Ejection Events

Meteoroid Impacts as a Source of Bennu's Particle Ejection Events

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

The Global Meteor Network -- Methodology and First Results

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