Space Force and helps further the pursuit of improved capabilities for understanding these objects and our preparedness to respond to the impact hazard NEOs pose to Earth.” “The release of these new bolide data demonstrates another key area of collaboration between NASA and the U.S. “The growing archive of bolide reports, as posted on the NASA CNEOS Fireballs website, has significantly increased scientific knowledge and contributes to the White House approved National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters. The approximate total radiated energy and pre-entry velocity vector (i.e., direction) can also be better derived from bolide light curve data. This uniquely rich data set has been greatly sought after by the scientific community, as an object’s breakup in Earth’s atmosphere provides scientific insight into the object’s strength and composition based on what altitudes at which it breaks up and disintegrates. Now, planetary defense experts will have access to even more detailed data – specifically, light curve information that captures the optical intensity variation during the several seconds of an object’s breakup in the atmosphere. government sensors detect these atmospheric impact events, and the bolide data is reported to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies ( CNEOS) fireballs database, which contains data going back to 1988 for nearly one thousand bolide events. The newly released data is composed of information on the changing brightness of bolides as they pass through Earth’s atmosphere, called light curves, that could enhance the planetary defense community’s current ability to model the effects of impacts by larger asteroids that could one day pose a threat to Earth.īolides, very bright meteors that can even be seen in daylight, are a regular occurrence – on the order of several dozen times per year – that result when our planet is impacted by asteroids too small to reach the ground but large enough to explode upon impact with Earth’s atmosphere. Space Force to continue furthering our nation’s efforts in planetary defense, which include finding, tracking, characterizing, and cataloguing near-Earth objects (NEOs).

This action results from collaboration between NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) and the U.S.

government sensors on fireball events (large bright meteors also known as bolides) for the benefit of the scientific and planetary defense communities. Space Force recently authorized the public release of decades of data collected by U.S.

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