Meteoroid mass from head echoes using particle-in-cell and finite-difference time-domain simulations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The increasing accessibility of space has enabled new technologies that have significantly affected our society. These technologies rely on spacecraft that must operate in the space environment, a domain that presents unique risks and dangers. Therefore, there is a significant motivation to understand the dangers of the space environment, one of which are meteoroids, defined by the International Astronomical Union as ``a solid natural object of a size roughly between 30 micrometers and 1 meter moving in, or coming from, interplanetary space." Spacecraft-meteoroid collisions are high energy and potentially destructive events due to the high meteoroid velocities relative to Earth that range from 11.2-72.8 km/s. Studies have shown that every square meter of exposed spacecraft surface area experiences a meteoroid impact that causes a crater with a diameter $> 40$ micrometers approximately once a day. The increasing reliance on spacecraft motivates a better understanding of the threats that meteoroids present, but estimates of the meteoroid mass distribution have orders of magnitude differences due to large uncertainties in meteoroid mass models. One method of calculating meteoroid mass uses radar reflections of the plasma surrounding an ablating meteoroid, otherwise known as meteor head echoes. High-Power Large-Aperture (HPLA) radars can detect approximately one head echo per second, enabling the collection of vast data sets of meteors and a better understanding of the meteoroid mass distribution. However, current methods used to calculate meteoroid masses from head echoes contain large uncertainties and result in distributions that are orders of magnitude different from distributions derived using other methods, such as crater analysis of spacecraft and optical observations. This thesis presents and validates a method to estimate meteoroid masses from head echo observations. First, the plasma distribution around an ablating meteoroid with Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are calculated and the effects of parameters such as the Earth's magnetic field on the distribution are explored. Also, the PIC derived plasma distributions are compared to a simplified analytical model based on kinetic theory that neglects electric and magnetic fields. Second, The radar cross section (RCS) of various meteor head plasma density distributions are calculated with Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) electromagnetic simulations. The simulation results are then used to develop a new model to map a head echo radar observation to a meteoroid mass. This new model is validated with head echo radar observations from the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR), and analysis shows that it outperforms previously used models used for head echo derived meteoroid mass estimation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Sugar, Glenn Flinn |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Cantwell, Brian |
| Degree committee member | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Degree committee member | Cantwell, Brian |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Glenn Sugar. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Glenn Flinn Sugar
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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