The threshold at which a meteor shower becomes hazardous to spacecraft

Abstract

Although the risk posed to spacecraft due to meteoroid impacts is dominated by sporadic meteoroids, meteor showers can raise this risk for short periods of time. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office issues meteor shower forecasts that describe these periods of elevated risk, primarily for the purpose of helping plan extravehicular activities. These forecasts are constructed using a list of meteor shower parameters that has evolved over time to include newly discovered showers and incorporate improved measurements of their characteristics. However, at this point in time, more than a thousand meteor showers have been reported by researchers, many of which are extremely minor, are unconfirmed, or lack measurements of critical parameters. Thus, a comprehensive approach is no longer feasible. In this report we present a quantitative criterion for a potentially hazardous meteor shower and apply this criterion to the list of established meteor showers in order to determine which showers should be included in our annual forecasts.