Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM): A Meteoroid Model For The Inner Solar System

McNamara, Heather; Jones, J.; Kauffman, Billy; Suggs, Robert M.; Cooke, William J.; Smith, Steven A.

doi:10.1007/s11038-005-9044-8

Cited by 54 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The history of meteoroid models of Earth's closest neighbor is surprisingly short (Borin et al, ; Cremonese et al, ). While many authors developed a suite of analytic, engineering, and dynamical models for the Earth (Fentzke & Janches, ; McNamara et al, ; Nesvorný et al, ; Nesvorný, Janches, et al, ; Nesvorný, Vokrouhlický, et al, ; Pokorný et al, ), the Moon itself has not yet been discussed in detail. With the advent of new ground‐based and space‐borne observations of the Moon there exists new interest in understanding the differences between the lunar and terrestrial meteoroid environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteoroids at the Moon: Orbital Properties, Surface Vaporization, and Impact Ejecta Production

et al. 2019

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We use a dynamical model to characterize the monthly and yearly variations of the lunar meteoroid environment for meteoroids originating from short and long‐period comets and the main‐belt asteroids. Our results show that if we assume the meteoroid mass flux of 43.3 tons per day at Earth, inferred from previous works, the mass flux of meteoroids impacting the Moon is 30 times smaller, approximately 1.4 tons per day, and shows variations of the order of 10% over a year. The mass flux difference is due to the combined effect of the smaller cross‐section of the Moon (factor of 13.46) and Earth's larger gravitational focusing (factor of 2–2.5). The lunar surface is vaporized by these impactors at an average impact vaporization flux of 11.6 × 10−16 g·cm−2·s−1, providing a significant source for the rarefied lunar exosphere. Our model predicts acceptable vaporization rates and reproduces the local time dependence of observations of the dust ejecta cloud, measured by the Lunar Dust Experiment on board NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment (LADEE) satellite. However, the predicted density of the lunar ejecta cloud is four orders of magnitude larger than reported values by LADEE. This discrepancy might be attributed to a much lower yield from meteoroid impacts on fluffy lunar regolith and/or a lower detection efficiency of the LADEE dust detector. We suggest an upper limit of 30 cm per million years for the soil gardening rate from small meteoroids.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteoroids at the Moon: Orbital Properties, Surface Vaporization, and Impact Ejecta Production

et al. 2019

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“…Inside and outside 1au the data are scarcer, although various models exist and are in use by NASA and ESA [e.g. [40][41][42][43][44]. The differential size distribution slope of particles larger than ∼100 µm was found to be steeper than −4, so that the mass density is dominated by particles ∼100 µm in radius.…”

Section: Size Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exozodiacal clouds: hot and warm dust around main sequence stars

Kral

Krivov

Defrère

et al. 2017

Astronomical Review

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A warm/hot dust component (at temperature >300 K) has been detected around ∼20% of A, F, G, K stars. This component is called 'exozodiacal dust' as it presents similarities with the zodiacal dust detected in our solar system, even though its physical properties and spatial distribution can be significantly different. Understanding the origin and evolution of this dust is of crucial importance, not only because its presence could hamper future detections of Earthlike planets in their habitable zones, but also because it can provide invaluable information about the inner regions of planetary systems. In this review, we present a detailed overview of the observational techniques used in the detection and characterisation of exozodiacal dust clouds ('exozodis') and the results they have yielded so far, in particular regarding the incidence rate of exozodis as a function of crucial parameters such as stellar type and age, or the presence of an outer cold debris disc. We also present the important constraints that have been obtained, on dust size distribution and spatial location, using state-of-the-art radiation transfer models on some of these systems. Finally, we investigate the crucial issue of how to explain the presence of exozodiacal dust around so many stars (regardless of their ages) despite the fact that such dust so close to its host star should disappear rapidly due to the coupled effect of collisions and stellar radiation forces. Several potential mechanisms have been proposed to solve this paradox and are reviewed in detail in this paper. The review finishes by presenting the future of this growing field.

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“…The value of 2.5 au is considered to be the distance from the Sun that water-ice sublimation is expected to start (e.g., McNamara et al 2004). We find the elapsed and total median time of 252P/LINEAR as a visible comet to be 4×10 3 years and 1.2×10 4 years, the latter of which is more in line with literature values (∼8.5×10 3 years as given by Levison & Duncan 1994) compared to that in the NEO region.…”

Section: Dynamical Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comet 252p/Linear: Born (Almost) Dead?

Brown

Wiegert

2016

ApJL

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Previous studies have revealed Jupiter-family comet 252P/LINEAR as a comet that was recently transported into the near-Earth object (NEO) region in ∼1800AD yet only being weakly active. In this Letter, we examine the "formed (almost) dead" hypothesis for 252P/LINEAR using both dynamical and observational approaches. By statistically examining the dynamical evolution of 252P/LINEAR over a period of 10 7 years, we find the median elapsed residency in the NEO region to be 4×10 2 years, which highlights the likelihood of 252P/LINEAR as an (almost) first-time NEO. With available cometary and meteor observations, we find the dust production rate of 252P/LINEAR to be on the order of 10 6 kg per orbit since its entry to the NEO region. These two lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the comet was likely to have formed in a volatile-poor environment. Cometary and meteor observations during the cometʼs unprecedented close approach to the Earth around 2016 March 21 would be useful for understanding of the surface and evolutionary properties of this unique comet.

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Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM): A Meteoroid Model For The Inner Solar System

Cited by 54 publications

References 15 publications

Meteoroids at the Moon: Orbital Properties, Surface Vaporization, and Impact Ejecta Production

Meteoroids at the Moon: Orbital Properties, Surface Vaporization, and Impact Ejecta Production

Exozodiacal clouds: hot and warm dust around main sequence stars

Comet 252p/Linear: Born (Almost) Dead?

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