Duration: 36 months
This PhD research leverages the unique Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO), the only operational telescopic tracking system in the world for meteor observations, to aim at revolutionising meteoroid risk assessment, focusing on analyzing faint sporadic meteor with velocities below 20 km/s (which are 65% of the total) with sizes from cm to mm of both cometary and asteroidal material (faster than 20 km/s are cometary). The project will reverse-engineering meteoroid properties from CAMO's data of light curve, lag, and wake of recorded meteors from 2018 to 2023. By using the MetSim Python library that implements the J. Borovička et al. (2007)'s erosion fragmentation model, this research will calculate tens of sporadic meteoroids' fragmentation, ablation, mass, and density properties. These will be used to create a new Bayesian Monte Carlo model that will be calibrated on Earth with our Electron Multiplying CCD (EMCCD) cameras observations making it the first empirically-informed fragmentation model. This tool is designed to surpass existing meteoroid satellite risk assessment models, helping tools like ESA’s MASTER and DRAMA software. The similarities of the sporadic meteor environment in the inner solar system will let model to provide new insights into meteoroid environments on Mars and Venus, addressing the limitations of traditional single-body ablation models used for material deposition as D. Subasinghe et al. (2016) show that around 90% of faint meteors exhibit fragmentation. The new model will provide the planetary atmospheric community with a tool for metallic atmospheric layers and meteoroid material deposition studies and a base future space missions instrumentations. This cutting-edge research led by Maximilian Vovk and guided by Prof. Peter G. Brown in collaboration with ESA, will result in two publications focusing on meteoroid risk assessments and the application of our model to planetary bodies.
