Speaker
Description
The recovery of freshly-fallen meteorite specimens, enabled by the precise observation of fireballs in the Earth’s atmosphere, is the only other method - beyond sample-return missions - to gather asteroid samples as pristine as possible. To this purpose, the PRISMA project (Prima Rete Italiana per la Sorveglianza sistematica di Meteore e Atmosfera) was born in 2016 and, since then, has deployed a fireball network dedicated to the observation of fireballs and bolides and to the recovery of freshly-fallen meteorites on the Italian territory [1,2]. The project started as a partner of the international collaboration FRIPON [3] and, to date, the network counts over 100 all-sky cameras and involves more than 80 participating institutions. The PRISMA network and collaboration are coordinated by INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.
Since 2016, PRISMA has observed more than 3000 bright meteors. A complete and original data analysis pipeline has been developed, mainly to perform an automatic astrometric and photometric calibration of each camera and to compute the trajectory of each observed fireball, estimating the value of the most relevant physical and orbital
parameters of the meteoroid [4]. To date, PRISMA observed 11 fireballs that were determined to be meteorite-droppers and for which a strewn-field was computed, for the search of freshly-fallen meteorites, on the Italian territory. In particular, the observations and data analysis of PRISMA allowed for the recovery of two meteorites, namely Cavezzo [5,6] (01/01/2020, L5-an, 55.3 g) and Matera [7] (14/02/2023, H5, 117.5 g).
In this contribution, we will present the latest updates on the development and implementation of the data reduction pipeline and on the analysis of the PRISMA observation dataset, as we are currently working towards the release of a first version of the PRISMA fireball database that will encompass the raw data and results of the first ten years
of observations.
References
1. Gardiol D. et al., PRISMA, Italian network for meteors and atmospheric studies, in: Proceedings of the IMC, Eds. Roggemans, A.; Roggemans, P., IMO, 2016, Egmond, the Netherlands; pages: 76-79.
2. Gardiol D. et al., News from the Italian PRISMA fireball network, in: Proceedings of the IMC, Eds. Rudawska, R. et al., IMO, 2018, Pezinok-Modra, Slovakia; pages: 81-86.
3. Colas F. et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics 2020, 644, A53.
4. Barghini D., Meteorites recovery and orbital elements of Near-Earth Objects from the observation of bright meteors: Scientific exploitation of the PRISMA fireball network data and of the missions of the JEM-EUSO program, PhD Thesis, Università degli Studi di Torino, Torino, 2023.
5. Gardiol D et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2021, 501, 1215-1227.
6. Pratesi G. et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science 2021, 56, 1125-1150.
7. Pratesi G. et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science 2025, 60, 2125-2148.