Speakers
Description
The NEar real-time MOnitoring System, NEMO, aims to collect and provide information on bright fireballs from objects entering Earth´s atmosphere from space. It was developed at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and then handed over to ESA where it is currently being operated. One of the main objectives of NEMO is to provide information in near real-time on fireball events which caused public attention. Social media and other sources are searched automatically for reports of fireballs. Credible events are then listed and recorded. In a second step, for events which are very bright or of special interest for other reasons additional information is collected. Examples are information on the trajectory, detection of related infrasound signals, estimations of the size and impact energy and if meteorites have been found.
Additional developments are ongoing and planned. These include a notification system to inform observation networks on events and a more automatic system to identify re-entering objects. At present NEMO collects data on past events only. NEMO seems perfectly suited to also provide predictions of coming fireball events. Re-entering space debris is one candidate and imminent impactors are another. Predictions of atmospheric impacts and fireballs would largely increase the public and scientific interest in such events. It would also enhance the credibility of the prediction capabilities of the NEO field.
The planned NEMO notification system could be used to spread the information on potential imminent impacts. In addition, information on the object before impact will largely improve the analysis of a resulting fireball and also serve as calibration for other events. Of course, predictions can have large uncertainties. It will have to be discussed at what level of confidence impact predictions will be published.
