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NASA NTRS2015

Lunar Impact Flash Locations

A bright impact flash detected by the NASA Lunar Impact Monitoring Program in March 2013 brought into focus the importance of determining the impact flash location. A process for locating the impact flash, and presumably its associated crater, was developed using commercially available software tools. The process was successfully applied to the March 2013 impact flash and put into production on an additional 300 impact flashes. The goal today: provide a description of the geolocation technique developed.

Moser, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Lunar Impact Flash Locations from NASA's Lunar Impact Monitoring Program

Meteoroids are small, natural bodies traveling through space, fragments from comets, asteroids, and impact debris from planets. Unlike the Earth, which has an atmosphere that slows, ablates, and disintegrates most meteoroids before they reach the ground, the Moon has little-to-no atmosphere to prevent meteoroids from impacting the lunar surface. Upon impact, the meteoroid's kinetic energy is partitioned into crater excavation, seismic wave production, and the generation of a debris plume. A flash of light associated with the plume is detectable by instruments on Earth. Following the initial observation of a probable Taurid impact flash on the Moon in November 2005,1 the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) began a routine monitoring program to observe the Moon for meteoroid impact flashes in early 2006, resulting in the observation of over 330 impacts to date. The main objective of the MEO is to characterize the meteoroid environment for application to spacecraft engineering and operations. The Lunar Impact Monitoring Program provides information about the meteoroid flux in near-Earth space in a size range-tens of grams to a few kilograms-difficult to measure with statistical significance by other means. A bright impact flash detected by the program in March 2013 brought into focus the importance of determining the impact flash location. Prior to this time, the location was estimated to the nearest half-degree by visually comparing the impact imagery to maps of the Moon. Better accuracy was not needed because meteoroid flux calculations did not require high-accuracy impact locations. But such a bright event was thought to have produced a fresh crater detectable from lunar orbit by the NASA spacecraft Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The idea of linking the observation of an impact flash with its crater was an appealing one, as it would validate NASA photometric calculations and crater scaling laws developed from hypervelocity gun testing. This idea was dependent upon LRO finding a fresh impact crater associated with one of the impact flashes recorded by Earth-based instruments, either the bright event of March 2013 or any other in the database of impact observations. To find the crater, LRO needed an accurate area to search. This Technical Memorandum (TM) describes the geolocation technique developed to accurately determine the impact flash location, and by association, the location of the crater, thought to lie directly beneath the brightest portion of the flash. The workflow and software tools used to geolocate the impact flashes are described in detail, along with sources of error and uncertainty and a case study applying the workflow to the bright impact flash in March 2013. Following the successful geolocation of the March 2013 flash, the technique was applied to all impact flashes detected by the MEO between November 7, 2005, and January 3, 2014.

Moser, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS2016

A Comparison of Radiometric Calibration Techniques for Lunar Impact Flashes

Video observations of lunar impact flashes have been made by a number of researchers since the late 1990's and the problem of determination of the impact energies has been approached in different ways (Bellot Rubio, et al., 2000 [1], Bouley, et al., 2012.[2], Suggs, et al. 2014 [3], Rembold and Ryan 2015 [4], Ortiz, et al. 2015 [5]). The wide spectral response of the unfiltered video cameras in use for all published measurements necessitates color correction for the standard filter magnitudes available for the comparison stars. An estimate of the color of the impact flash is also needed to correct it to the chosen passband. Magnitudes corrected to standard filters are then used to determine the luminous energy in the filter passband according to the stellar atmosphere calibrations of Bessell et al., 1998 [6]. Figure 1 illustrates the problem. The camera pass band is the wide black curve and the blue, green, red, and magenta curves show the band passes of the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters for which we have calibration star magnitudes. The blackbody curve of an impact flash of temperature 2800K (Nemtchinov, et al., 1998 [7]) is the dashed line. This paper compares the various photometric calibration techniques and how they address the color corrections necessary for the calculation of luminous energy (radiometry) of impact flashes. This issue has significant implications for determination of luminous efficiency, predictions of impact crater sizes for observed flashes, and the flux of meteoroids in the 10s of grams to kilogram size range.

Suggs, R.↗
NASA NTRS2015

A Bright Lunar Impact Flash Linked to the Virginid Meteor Complex

On 17 March 2013 at 03:50:54 UTC, NASA detected a bright impact flash on the Moon caused by a meteoroid impacting the lunar surface. There was meteor activity in Earth's atmosphere the same night from the Virginid Meteor Complex. The impact crater associated with the impact flash was found and imaged by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Goal: Monitor the Moon for impact flashes produced by meteoroids striking the lunar surface. Determine meteoroid flux in the 10's gram to kilogram size range.

Moser, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS2015

A Bright Lunar Impact Flash Linked to the Virginid Meteor Complex

Since early 2006, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has observed over 330 impact flashes on the Moon, produced by meteoroids striking the lunar surface. On 17 March 2013 at 03:50:54.312 UTC, the brightest flash of a 9-year routine observing campaign was observed by two 0.35 m telescopes at MSFC. The camera onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a NASA spacecraft mapping the Moon from lunar orbit, discovered the fresh crater associated with this impact [1] approximately 3 km from the location predicted by a newly developed geolocation technique [2]. The meteoroid impactor responsible for this event may have been part of a stream of large particles encountered by the Earth/Moon associated with the Virginid Meteor Complex, as evidenced by a cluster of five fireballs seen in Earth's atmosphere on the same night by the NASA All Sky Fireball Network [3] and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network [4]. Crater size calculations based on assumptions derived from fireball measurements yielded an estimated crater diameter of 10-23 m rim-to-rim using the Holsapple [5] and Gault [6] models, a result consistent with the observed crater measured to be 18 m across. This is the first time a lunar impact flash has been associated with fireballs in Earth's atmosphere and an observed crater.

Moser, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Algorithms for Lunar Flash Video Search, Measurement, and Archiving

Lunar meteoroid impact flashes provide a method to estimate the flux of the large meteoroid flux and thus their hazard to spacecraft. Although meteoroid impacts on the Moon have been detected using video methods for over a decade, the difficulty of manually searching hours of video for the rare, extremely brief impact flashes has discouraged the technique's systematic implementation. A prototype has been developed for the purpose of automatically searching Lunar video records for impact flashes, eliminating false detections, editing the returned possible flashes, and archiving and documenting the results. The theory and organization of the program is discussed with emphasis on the filtering out of several classes of false detections and retaining the brief portions of the raw video necessary for in depth analysis of the flashes detected. Several utilities for measurement, analysis, and location of the flashes on the moon included in the program are demonstrated. Application of the program to a year's worth of Lunar observations is discussed along with examples of impact flashes as well as several classes of false impact flashes.

Swift, Wesley↗
NASA NTRS2007

Algorithms for Lunar Flash Video Search, Measurement, and Archiving

Lunar meteoroid impact flashes provide a method to estimate the flux of the large meteoroid flux and thus their hazard to spacecraft. Although meteoroid impacts on the Moon have been detected using video methods for over a decade, the difficulty of manually searching hours of video for the rare, extremely brief impact flashes has discouraged the technique's systematic implementation. A prototype has been developed for the purpose of automatically searching lunar video records for impact flashes, eliminating false detections, editing the returned possible flashes, Z and archiving and documenting the results. The theory and organization of the program is discussed with emphasis on the filtering out of several classes of false detections and retaining the brief portions of the raw video necessary for in depth analysis of the flashes detected. Several utilities for measurement, analysis, and location of the flashes on the moon included in the program are demonstrated. Application of the program to a year's worth of lunar observations is discussed along with examples of impact flashes as well as several classes of false impact flashes.

Swift, Wesley↗
NASA NTRS2017

Luminous Efficiency of Hypervelocity Meteoroid Impacts on the Moon Derived from the 2015 Geminid Meteor Shower

Meteoroids cannot be observed directly because of their small size. In-situ measurements of the meteoroid environment are rare and have very small collecting areas. The Moon, in contrast, has a large collecting area and therefore can be used as a large meteoroid detector for gram-kilogram sized particles. Meteoroids striking the Moon create an impact flash observable by Earth-based telescopes. Their kinetic energy is converted to luminous energy with some unknown luminous efficiency η(v), which is likely a function of meteoroid velocity (among other factors). This luminous efficiency is imperative to calculating the kinetic energy and mass of the meteoroid, as well as meteoroid fluxes, and it cannot be determined in the laboratory at meteoroid speeds and sizes due to mechanical constraints. Since laboratory simulations fail to resolve the luminous efficiency problem, observations of the impact flash itself must be utilized. Meteoroids associated with specific meteor showers have known speed and direction, which simplifies the determination of the luminous efficiency. NASA has routinely monitored the Moon for impact flashes since early 2006 [1]. During this time, several meteor showers have produced multiple impact flashes on the Moon, yielding a sufficient sample of impact flashes with which to perform a luminous efficiency analysis similar to that outlined in Bellot Rubio et al. [2, 3] and further described by Moser et al. [4], utilizing Earth-based measurements of the shower flux and mass index. The Geminid meteor shower has produced the most impact flashes in the NASA dataset to date with over 80 detections. More than half of these Geminids were recorded in 2015 (locations pictured in Fig. 1), and may represent the largest single-shower impact flash sample known. This work analyzes the 2015 Geminid lunar impacts and calculates their luminous efficiency. The luminous efficiency is then applied to calculate the kinetic energies and mass-es of these shower meteoroids.

Moser, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Large Meteoroid Impact on the Moon 17 March 2013

NASA's routine monitoring of lunar impact flashes has recorded nearly 300 impacts since 2006. On 17 March 2013 the brightest event to date was observed in two 0.35m telescopes at the Marshall Space Flight Center. With a peak red magnitude brighter than 4.3 and an impact flash visible for over 1 second, the impact kinetic energy was equivalent to nearly 5 tons of TNT. A possible association with a meteor shower observed in the Earth's atmosphere will be described. Corresponding crater dimensions and observability of the impact crater by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be discussed.

Suggs, Robert M.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Large Meteoroid Impact on the Moon 17 March 2013

NASA's routine monitoring of lunar impact flashes has recorded nearly 300 impacts since 2006. On 17 March 2013 the brightest event to date was observed in two 0.35m telescopes at the Marshall Space Flight Center. With a peak red magnitude brighter than 4.3 and an impact flash visible for over 1 second, the impact kinetic energy was equivalent to nearly 5 tons of TNT. A possible association with a meteor shower observed in the Earth's atmosphere will be described. Corresponding crater dimensions and observability of the impact crater by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be discussed.

Suggs, Robert M.↗