The UK Desert Fireball Network: Continuation

英国沙漠火球网络：续

• 批准号: ST/H002464/1
• 负责人: Philip Bland
• 金额: $ 15.87万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2010 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FH002464%2F1
• 关键词: UK; Desert; Fireball; Network; Continuation

The Desert Fireball Network has already been an extremely successful facility. However, to fully exploit the science potential of this system (see 'Objectives'), it is necessary to go beyond the trial network that we currently have, and build towards a fully operational fireball network covering a large area (>1 million km^2). To summarise our current achievements: We have designed, built, and field-tested an autonomous fireball observatory. We deployed a small trial network of these units in the Western Australian Nullarbor, and showed that they could withstand desert conditions for extended periods. We demonstrated that our imaging system, when integrated to provide networked observations of fireballs, could deliver some of the most precise orbital data ever recovered from fireballs. We determined the first orbits for southern hemisphere fireballs. We determined fall positions for objects with a significant terminal mass. We recovered a meteorite on the first day, of the first search: the first fragment was found 97m south from the predicted central fall line; the second fragment was recovered 39m north from the central line shortly after. In summary, we have demonstrated that we have the technology, logistics, and methodology to address research questions of fundamental importance, and acquire a unique sample set. The last remaining milestone was to prove that we could recover meteorites on the ground. The fact that we found meteorites within 100m of their predicted fall positions indicates that our combination of standard computation of meteoroid 'darkflight' and high resolution modelling of winds in the upper atmosphere (see main case) is an extremely powerful tool. In short, we have met all our near-term goals. It is now time to move beyond a preliminary network, so that we can fully address the central research objectives. We currently have four observatories (two of which are STFC funded). This trial network has been in operation for only around 2.5 years. Although the small number of observatories makes it vulnerable to single-point failure (loss of one camera can result in suspension of networked observations), our success with the DFN (we are orders-of-magnitude more productive than previous fireball networks - see main case) indicates that an expanded network will be capable of delivering dozens of meteorites over the lifetime of the project. The proposed work will allow us to begin that expansion.

沙漠火球网络已经是一个非常成功的设施。但是，为了充分利用该系统的科学潜力（请参阅“目标”），有必要超越我们目前拥有的试验网络，并朝着覆盖大面积的完全运行的火球网络（> 100万公里^2）建立。总结我们当前的成就：我们已经设计，建造和现场测试了一个自动火球天文台。我们在西澳大利亚州的Nullarbor部署了一个小型试验网络，并表明它们可以长期承受沙漠条件。我们证明，我们的成像系统集成以提供对火球的网络观察结果，可以提供一些从火球中回收的最精确的轨道数据。我们确定了南半球火球的第一个轨道。我们确定了具有显着末端质量的物体的秋季位置。我们在第一次搜索的第一天回收了陨石：第一个片段在预测的中央秋天线以南97m。不久之后，第二片片段从中央线向北39m回收。总而言之，我们已经证明，我们拥有技术，物流和方法论来解决有关基本重要性的研究问题，并获得了独特的样本集。最后剩下的里程碑是证明我们可以在地面上恢复陨石。我们在预测的秋季位置的100m内发现陨石这一事实表明，我们将标准的Meteoroid“ Darkflight”计算和高层大气中风的高分辨率建模（请参阅主要情况）是一种非常强大的工具。简而言之，我们已经实现了我们所有的近期目标。现在是时候超越初步网络了，以便我们可以充分解决中心研究目标。目前，我们有四个观测员（其中两个是由STFC资助的）。该试验网络仅运营了大约2。5年。尽管少量的观测值使其容易受到单点故障的攻击（一台相机的丢失可能导致网络观测值暂停），但我们在DFN方面的成功（我们比以前的火球网络更有生产力，而不是以前的火球网络 - 请参阅主要案例）表明，扩展的网络将能够在该项目的生命周期内提供数十个生命周期的网络。拟议的工作将使我们能够开始扩展。