NES Video Chat: Let's Talk About Meteors, Meteorites and Comets
Dr. Bill Cooke and Rhiannon Blaauw answered questions on Jan.
12, 2012 about meteors, meteorites and comets and their
potential danger to spacecraft. Cooke, the lead for NASA's
Meteoroid Environmental Office, and Blaauw, a meteor physicist,
both have astronomy degrees and work in the Meteoroid
Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala. The MEO provides NASA with models of the
meteoroid environment, which are used in the design of
protective shields on spacecraft. The MEO improves models by
analyzing meteor observations data collected by using equipment
such as radar and all-sky and low-light-level cameras. The all-
sky cameras currently are being placed around the United States.
They detect fireballs, or very bright meteors, every night and
post the results on a public website . Looking at these data
help Cooke and Blaauw determine the number and size of space
rocks hitting Earth every day, how fast they were goi