EU-ESA Workshop on Meteor Observations for Planetary Defence

Session

Physical properties, population and flux of meteors for planetary defence

5 Nov 2026, 09:00

Petralia Sottana, Sicily

35. When Asteroids Meet Earth: From Tunguska to Modern Planetary Defense

Elizabeth Silber

05/11/2026, 09:00

Atmospheric impacts pose a significant hazard even when an incoming object disintegrates before reaching Earth's surface. Historical events, including the 1908 Tunguska airburst and the 2013 Chelyabinsk superbolide, demonstrate the destructive potential of atmospheric shock waves and the importance of understanding how incoming asteroids deposit their kinetic energy. During hypersonic entry,...

37. Bolide light curve systematics from 75 recovered meteorites

Peter Jenniskens (SETI institute)

05/11/2026, 09:25

How does the energy deposition profile (light curve), deceleration, and penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere depend on asteroid composition and meteorite type? Here, we present the light curve and velocity profile of 75 bolides from camera-documented meteorite falls. The light curves as a function of altitude generally develop in the following seven phases: Phase 1) an initial rapid...

18. Automated Meteor Impact Classification for Planetary Defence

Maria Gritsevich (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC))

05/11/2026, 09:50

Meteor observation networks are generating increasingly large,
precise, and geographically distributed datasets of meteoroid
atmospheric entries. These observations offer an opportunity to move
beyond detection and trajectory reconstruction towards automated
physical characterisation and classification of incoming bodies. The
α–β method (Gritsevich 2009) provides a physically...

33. Open discussions

05/11/2026, 10:15

8. Preliminary Results for the Velocity Distribution and Fireball Flux Density of Sporadics derived from FRIPON Data

Michael Frühauf

05/11/2026, 11:00

FRIPON is a fully automated network of optical all-sky cameras monitoring meteoroid entries into the Earth's atmosphere. Using these data, we present preliminary results on the velocity distribution and the fireball flux density of sporadics in the mass range of approximately 10⁻³ to 10¹ kg. We also discuss the methodology, including the applied de-biasing.

29. A comprehensive survey of meteorite flux to Earth using the Global Meteor Network

Chloe Kadir (The University of Manchester, UK)

05/11/2026, 11:25

Knowledge of the flux, composition, and physical characteristics of natural objects entering Earth’s atmosphere is critical for understanding Solar System formation and evolution [1], characterising the population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) [2], modelling atmospheric survivability [3], and linking meteorites to their source regions [4, 5]. The only comprehensive observational estimate of...

24. Open discussions