Interactions of large meteoroids and small interplanetary bodies with the Earth's atmosphere: Theories and observational constraints

Abstract

Problems of hypervelocity interaction of large bodies with the Earth's atmosphere has attracted more attention during last few years. Several new concepts of dynamical explosive fragmentation of strong interplanetary bodies at extremely low heights under dynamic pressures of hundreds of Mdyn/cm2 were published. Comparison of these theoretical models with precise observations has not yet been done, because data on atmospheric penetration of large bodies are not available. Single body theory with sudden gross-fragmentation was successfully applied to photographic observations of fireballs. The largest bodies observed have sizes up to several meters. The highest dynamic pressure acting on these observed bodies reached slightly over 100 Mdyn/cm2. All these photographed fireballs follow theoretical concepts of motion of either the single-body or the single-body with gross-fragmentation under dynamic pressures in the range from 1 to 12 Mdyn/cm2. When this theory has been applied to photographic observations, typical standard deviation of the distance flown in the trajectory has been found in a range of 10 to 30 m for one observed distance corresponding also to the geometrical precision of the observations. This model can explain all good observations of atmospheric trajectories of meteoroids up to initial sizes of several meters with high precision. Also the three photographed and one videorecorded meteorite falls fit to this concept completely. The most important phenomenon of atmospheric motion of meteoroids up to several meters in size is the ablation with final stage of hot vapor from ablated material. Spectral records of meteoroids up to several meters in size, down to a height of 16 km and for various velocities show overwhelming radiation of rather low excited metalic atoms (several eV; temperatures 3000 to 5000 K) in the pass-band of visible light. Radiation from high excited atoms of either atmospheric or ablational origin forms only an insignificant part of visible radiation. Contrary to this regime, theories of very large bodies contain ablation mostly in the form of explosive fragmentation. Ablation at higher heights is negligible. This absence of “classical” ablation and fragmentation at low dynamic pressures for large bodies (contrary to observations of smaller bodies) brings the body to lower heights without too much change of size and makes thus the dynamic pressure much higher than in reality. In any case the change of body dynamics and radiation going from sizes of several meters (observed regime) to sizes of several tens of meters (hypothetical regime) may be crucial for our understanding of dynamics and radiation of large body penetration through the low atmosphere to the Earth's surface. Observations of atmospheric trajectory of these bodies with sufficiently high precision are extremely needed.