NASA to set-up camera network across U.S. to triangulate fireballs

March 2, 2011 – Every day about 100 tons of meteoroids — fragments of dust and gravel and sometimes even big rocks – enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Stand out under the stars for more than a half an hour on a clear night and you’ll likely see a few of the meteors produced by the onslaught. But where does all this stuff come from? Surprisingly, the answer is not well known. Now NASA is deploying a network of smart cameras across the United States to answer the question, What’s Hitting Earth? Did that meteor you saw blazing through the sky last night come from the asteroid belt? Was it created in a comet’s death throes? Or was it a piece of space junk meeting a fiery demise? “When I get to work each morning and power up my computer, there’s an email waiting with answers,” says William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “And I don’t have to lift a finger, except to click my mouse button.” Groups of smart cameras in the new meteor network triangulate the fireballs’ paths, and special software1 uses the data to compute their orbits and email Cooke his morning message. “If someone calls me and asks ‘What was that?’ I’ll be able to tell them. We’ll have a record of every big meteoroid that enters the atmosphere over the certain parts of the U.S. Nothing will burn up in those skies without me knowing about it!” In other U.S. meteor networks, someone has to manually look at all the cameras’ data and calculate the orbits – a painstaking process. “With our network, our computers do it for us – and fast,” says Cooke. The network’s first three cameras, each about the size of a gumball machine, are already up and running. Cooke’s team will soon have 15 cameras deployed east of the Mississippi River, with plans to expand nationwide2. Cooke is actively seeking schools, science centers, and planetaria willing to host his cameras. Criteria are listed in the notes at the end of this story. –Physics.org