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Leonid Shower Probe of Aerothermochemistry in Meteoric Plasmas and Implication for the Origin of Life

Author
Popova, O.
Published
Jan. 29, 2000.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Kruger, C. H., DeVincenzi, Donald L., Packan, D., Fonda, M., Laux, C., Jenniskens, Peter S. I., Wilson, Mike, and Boyd, I. D.
Online Version

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Summary
The rarefied and high Mach number (up to 270) of the flow field of a typical meteoroid as it enters the Earth's atmosphere implies conditions of ablation and atmospheric chemistry that have proven to be as difficult to grasp as the proverbial shooting star. An airborne campaign was organized to study these processes during an intense Leonid shower. A probe of molecular band emission now demonstrates that the flash of light from a common meteor originates in the wake of the object rather than in the meteor head. A new theoretical approach using the direct simulation Monte Carlo technique demonstrates that the ablation process is critical in heating the air in that wake. Air molecules impinge on a dense cloud of ablated material in front of the meteoroid head into an extended wake that has the observed excitation temperatures. These processes determine what extraterrestrial materials may have been delivered to Earth at the time of the origin of life.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 20000120415.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
No Copyright.
View MARC record | catkey: 15969721