New meteor showers identified in the CAMS and SonotaCo meteoroid orbit surveys

A cluster analysis was applied to the combined meteoroid orbit database derived from low-light level video observations by the SonotaCo consortium in Japan (64,650 meteors observed between 2007 and 2009) and by the Cameras for All-sky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) project in California, during its first year of operation (40,744 meteors from Oct. 21, 2010 to Dec. 31, 2011). The objective was to identify known and potentially new meteoroid streams and identify their parent bodies. The database was examined by a single-linking algorithm using the Southworth and Hawkins D-criterion to identify similar orbits, with a low criterion threshold of D < 0.05. A minimum member threshold of 6 produced a total of 88 meteoroid streams. 43 are established streams and 45 are newly identified streams. The newly identified streams were included as numbers 448-502 in the IAU Meteor Shower Working List. Potential parent bodies are proposed.Comment: Accepted in Proceedings of the Meteoroids 2013 Conference Aug. 26-30, 2013, A.M. University, Poznan, Polan

An Observing Campaign to Monitor the Reentry of the Automated Transfer Vehicle "Jules Verne" in August 2008

This presentation was part of the session : Sample Return ChallengesSixth International Planetary Probe WorkshopThe next great opportunity to investigate aspects of entry and descent dynamics is the reentry of ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) called "Jules Verne". This first in a series of ATVs was launched on March 9, 2008. It has a function similar to that of the Russian Progress, a re-supply ship for the International Space Station (ISS). It is scheduled to dock with ISS in April, then undock in early August. An observing campaign is being organized to monitor the reentry of the 15-ton ATV-1 over the south Pacific ocean on August 8. An international team of researchers from governments, universities, and private institutions will deploy from NASA Ames Research Center in California, travel to the staging area, and field a wide range of imagers and spectrographs to record the manner in which ATV breaks during entry. This data is expected to constrain the model uncertainties in the size of the debris footprint and help ensure future safe returns of ATV.ESA, NAS

Comets and meteor showers

Earth occasionally crosses the debris streams produced by comets and other active bodies in our solar system. These manifest meteor showers that provide an opportunity to explore these bodies without a need to visit them in-situ. Observations of meteor showers provide unique insights into the physical and dynamical properties of their parent bodies, as well as into the compositions and the structure of near-surface dust. In this chapter, we discuss the development and current state of affairs of meteor science, with a focus on its role as a tool to study comets, and review the established parent body -- meteor shower linkages.Comment: To appear in Comets II

The structural changes of water ice I during warmup

The polymorph transitions of vapor deposited water ice I during warmup from 15 K to 210 K was mapped by means of selected area electron diffraction. The polymorph transitions account for many phenomena observed in laboratory analog studies of cometary outgassing and radial diffusion in UV photolyzed interstellar ices

Radiation Modeling for the Reentry of the Hayabusa Sample Return Capsule

Predicted shock-layer emission signatures during the reentry of the Japanese Hayabusa capsule are presented and compared with flight measurements conducted during an airborne observation mission in NASA's DC-8 Airborne Laboratory. For selected altitudes at 11 points along the flight trajectory of the capsule, lines of sight were extracted from flow field solutions computed using the in-house high-fidelity CFD code, DPLR. These lines of sight were used as inputs for the line-by-line radiation code NEQAIR, and emission spectra of the air plasma were computed in the wavelength range from 300 nm to 1600 nm, a range which covers all of the different experiments onboard the DC-8. In addition, the computed flow field solutions were post-processed with the material thermal response code FIAT, and the resulting surface temperatures of the heat shield were used to generate thermal emission spectra based on Planck radiation. Both spectra were summed and integrated over the flow field. The resulting emission at each trajectory point was propagated to the DC-8 position and transformed into incident irradiance to be finally compared with experimental data

Flow and Radiation Analyses for Stardust Entry at High Altitude

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76603/1/AIAA-2008-1215-337.pd

Stardust Hypervelocity Entry Observing Campaign Support

In the early morning of January 15, 2006, the Stardust Sample Return Capsule (SRC) successfully delivered its precious cargo of cometary particles to the awaiting recovery team at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). As the SRC entered at 12.8 km/s, the fastest manmade object to traverse the atmosphere, a team of researchers imaged the event aboard the NASA DC-8 airborne observatory. At SRC entry, the airplane was at an altitude of 11.9 km positioned within 6.4 km of the prescribed, preferred target view location. The incoming SRC was first acquired approximately 18 seconds (s) after atmospheric interface and tracked for approximately 60 s, an observation period that is roughly centered in time around predicted peak heating