(meteorobs) Re: meteor on Mars

Swift, Wesley Wesley.R.Swift at msfc.nasa.gov
Mon Jun 13 16:38:36 EDT 2005


 More about Meteors in Space:


*	Dr. Bill Cooke of NASA / MSFC generated a table of 12 predicted
meteor showers on Mars in NASA/TM-2001-210935 "Mars Transportation
Environment Definition Document" dated March 2001.  His table (table 2-8,
Page 2-13) is in section 2.3.4.  I believe one of the showers corresponded
to the time of the alleged meteor captured by the Mars rover.  
http://trs.nis.nasa.gov/archive/00000553/01/tm210935.pdf

*	Crude camcorder observations of a few 2001 Leonids were taken by the
International Space Station Expedition 3 crew.   
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/17may_issmeteors.htm

*	I also believe that one of the Voyager spacecraft recorded a meteor
in Jupiter's atmosphere but I don't have a reference for it.  Then of course
there is Shoemaker-Levy 9, the BIG one: More than theory there! 
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/



Wes


-----Original Message-----
From: meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org
[mailto:meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org] On Behalf Of vaubaill
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 8:43 AM
To: meteorobs at meteorobs.org
Subject: (meteorobs) Re: meteoron Mars

Hello guys,

Waow, lots of questions!
Let me start me the easiest: the image was processed by M. Lemmon and J. 
Bell, so I can't answer any of these question without taking the risk to be
200% wrong ;-)

About meteors on Mars:
-yes there were some studies about meteor showers on Mars. See:
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2004A%26A...416..78
3S&db_key=AST&high=425d6798a828937
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1999P%26SS...47.147
5C&db_key=AST&high=425d6798a811332
and for Venus:
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2004Icar..168...23C
&db_key=AST&high=425d6798a811332

-yes the idea to observe martian meteors "from above", and was already done
on the Earth during the Leonids by the satellite MSX (see Jenniskens et al.
02)

-all these works are theoritical (of course)

-yes the entry velocity of meteors on Mars are lower than on Earth, because
Mars is farer away from the Sun than the Earth (just a statistical effect of
course).

-we know the observed streak is not Viking Orbiter A (and not VO2 as mention
by spance.com) because of the light curve

Jeremie

--
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* Jeremie VAUBAILLON
* Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
* University of Western Ontario
* London, Ontario
* N6A 3K7
* CANADA
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