The Southern Argentina Agile Meteor Radar (SAAMER): Platform for comprehensive meteor radar observations and studies (original) (raw)
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The Astrophysical Journal, 2015
We present an initial survey in the southern sky of the sporadic meteoroid orbital environment obtained with the Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar (SAAMER) Orbital System (OS), in which over three-quarters of a million orbits of dust particles were determined from 2012 January through 2015 April. SAAMER-OS is located at the southernmost tip of Argentina and is currently the only operational radar with orbit determination capability providing continuous observations of the southern hemisphere. Distributions of the observed meteoroid speed, radiant, and heliocentric orbital parameters are presented, as well as those corrected by the observational biases associated with the SAAMER-OS operating parameters. The results are compared with those reported by three previous surveys performed with the Harvard Radio Meteor Project, the Advanced Meteor Orbit Radar, and the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar, and they are in agreement with these previous studies. Weighted distributions for meteoroids above the thresholds for meteor trail electron line density, meteoroid mass, and meteoroid kinetic energyare also considered. Finally, the minimum line density and kinetic energy weighting factors are found to be very suitable for meteroid applications. The outcomes of this work show that, given SAAMER's location, the system is ideal for providing crucial data to continuously study the South Toroidal and South Apex sporadic meteoroid apparent sources.
A status update on Southern Hemisphere Meteoroid Measurements with SAAMER
2019
Hypervelocity meteoroid impacts are a risk to spacecraft operations. Mitigation of the meteoroid impact risk can be accomplished by implementing spacecraft designs that minimize the threat to critical systems, operational changes to the spacecraft orientation during mission operations, or a combination of both. Knowledge of the meteoroid threat in terms of mass-dependent flux (both rate and direction) is required in order to best implement the mitigation strategies. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) assesses the risk posed to space assets by naturally occurring meteoroids, either from the sporadic background or meteors showers. Historically, most models used are based on monitoring the meteoroid environment in the Northern Hemisphere and only partially the Southern Hemisphere, leaving some potential threats without means to be catalogued. To address this gap, an effort to upgrade an existing radar facility in Southern Argentina is underway in order to develop the needed capa...
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2010
1] The Southern Argentina Agile Meteor Radar (SAAMER) was installed at Rio Grande on Tierra del Fuego (53.8°S, 67.8°W) in May 2008 and has been operational for ∼24 months. This paper describes the motivations for the radar design and its placement at the southern tip of South America, its operating modes and capabilities, and observations of the mean winds, planetary waves, and tides during its first ∼20 months of operation. SAAMER was specifically designed to provide very high resolution of large-scale motions and hopefully enable direct measurements of the vertical momentum flux by gravity waves, which have only been possible previously with dual-or multiple-beam radars and lidars or in situ measurements. SAAMER was placed on Tierra del Fuego because it was a region devoid of similar measurements, the latitude was anticipated to provide high sensitivity to an expected large semidiurnal tide, and the region is now recognized to be a "hot spot" of small-scale gravity wave activity extending from the troposphere into the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, perhaps the most dynamically active location on Earth. SAAMER was also intended to permit simultaneous enhanced meteor studies, including "head echo" and "nonspecular" measurements, which were previously possible only with high-power largeaperture radars. Initial measurements have defined the mean circulation and structure, exhibited planetary waves at various periods, and revealed large semidiurnal tide amplitudes and variability, with maximum amplitudes at higher altitudes often exceeding 60 m s −1 and amplitude modulations at periods from a few to ∼30 days. Citation: Fritts, D. C., et al. (2010), Southern Argentina Agile Meteor Radar: System design and initial measurements of large-scale winds and tides,
Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR)
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2004
The radar system described here (CMOR) com- prises a basic 5-element receiving system, co-located with a pulsed transmitter, specifically designed to observe meteor echoes and to determine their position in space with an angu- lar resolution of 1 and a radial resolution of 3 km. Two secondary receiving sites, a few km distant and arranged to form approximately a right
Current activities at the ESA/ESTEC Meteor Research Group
2015
The Meteor Research Group of ESA/ESTEC has been active in the field of meteor research since the year 1998. Currently we are focusing on several activities: (a) Data analysis of the double-station data of our CILBO setup (Canary Island Long-Baseline Observatory): Determining the flux density of meteoroids, comparing it to other data sources, and determining whether the optical data can be used to constrain meteoroid models; testing the quality of the orbits computed from these cameras; producing a processing pipeline for the analysis of meteor spectra. (b) Expansion of the CILBO setup with wider-angle cameras that are better suited for the flux measurements. We modify existing cameras to be robust enough to survive the environmental conditions on the Canary Islands and install them in the existing CILBO hut. (c) We are supporting studies for lunar impact flash observations on the Moon, both ground-based and possibly space-based. (d) The meteor data archiving system at ESTEC is being...
Earth, Moon, and Planets, 2007
Radio science and meteor physics issues regarding meteor ''head-echo'' observations with high power, large aperture (HPLA) radars, include the frequency and latitude dependency of the observed meteor altitude, speed, and deceleration distributions. We address these issues via the first ever use and analysis of meteor observations from the Poker Flat AMISR (PFISR: 449.3 MHz), Sondrestrom (SRF: 1,290 MHz), and Arecibo (AO: 430 MHz) radars. The PFISR and SRF radars are located near the Arctic Circle while AO is in the tropics. The meteors observed at each radar were detected and analyzed using the same automated FFT periodic micrometeor searching algorithm. Meteor parameters (event altitude, velocity, and deceleration distributions) from all three facilities are compared revealing a clearly defined altitude ''ceiling effect'' in the 1,290 MHz results relative to the 430/449.3 MHz results. This effect is even more striking in that the Arecibo and PFISR distributions are similar even though the two radars are over 2,000 times different in sensitivity and at very different latitudes, thus providing the first statistical evidence that HPLA meteor radar observations are dominated by the incident wavelength, regardless of the other radar parameters. We also offer insights into the meteoroid fragmentation and ''terminal'' process.
Advanced Meteor radar at Tirupati: System details and first results
Journal Geophysical Research, 2014
An advanced meteor radar, viz, Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) meteor radar (SVU MR)operating at 35.25 MHz, was installed at Sri Venkateswara University (SVU), Tirupati (13.63°N, 79.4°E), India, inAugust 2013 for continuous observations of horizontal winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere(MLT). This manuscript describes the purpose of the meteor radar, system configuration, measurementtechniques, its data products, and operating parameters, as well as a comparison of measured mean windsin the MLT with contemporary radars over the Indian region. It is installed close to the Gadanki (13.5°N,79.2°E) mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) radar tofill the region between 85 and 100 km wherethis radar does not measure winds. The present radarprovides additional information due to its highmeteor detection rate, which results in accurate wind information from 70 to 110 km. As afirst step, wemade a comparison of SVU MR-derived horizontal winds in the MLT region with those measured by similarand different (MST and MF radars) techniques over the Indian region, as well as model (horizontal windmodel 2007) data sets. The comparison showed an exquisite agreement between the overlapping altitudes(82–98 km) of different radars. Zonal winds compared very well, as did the meridional winds. The observeddiscrepancies and limitations in the wind measurement are discussed in the light of different measuringtechniques and the effects of small-scale processes like gravity waves. This new radar is expected to play animportant role in our understanding of the vertical and lateral coupling of different regions of the atmosphere that will be possible when measurements from nearby locations are combined.
The Astronomical Journal, 2019
We present determinations of the meteoroid differential mass-index, s, using over a decade of meteor observations from the Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar (SAAMER). For this, we employ an autonomous statistical technique to determine this parameter from the measured radar echo amplitudes. Unlike previous studies, we examine the role of the system noise in the determination of this parameter and found that if not taking into account appropriately, the results can yield significant over-estimations of the mass-index. In general, we found that a value of s = 2.0 represents SAAMER's results in general agreement with recent studies performed in the northern hemisphere. We explore both, the index interannual and seasonal variability and, unlike previous studies, we found it to be constant, except during the presence of the Southern delta Aquariids meteor shower which is so strong that dominates the meteor counts when present. Our study suggests that using the maximum echo amplitude for these studies is not ideal as it can be biased by many factors which make the inaccuracies larger than the precision estimated by the fitting routine. A method that results in a more direct estimate of the electron line density would be required which takes into account range, gain pattern, system noise, etc.