Description:
In an attempt to overcome some of the deficiencies of
existing meteoroid models, NASA’s Space Environments and
Effects Program sponsored a three year research effort at the
University of Western Ontario. The resulting
understanding of the sporadic meteoroid environment –
particularly the nature and distribution of the sporadic
sources – were then incorporated into this new meteoroid
environment model (MEM) by members of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Some of the
revolutionary aspects of MEM are a) identification of the
sporadic radiants with real sources of meteoroids, such as
comets, b) a physics-based approach which yields accurate
fluxes and directionality for interplanetary spacecraft
anywhere from .2 AU to 2 AU, and c) velocity distributions
obtained from theory and validated against observation.
Given a state vector, the model outputs mass-limited or
penetrating fluxes and average impact speeds and distributions
on the surfaces of a cube-like structure with the ram face
oriented along the spacecraft velocity.
This new
release contains both an interplanetary version and a Earth
version of MEM. The Earth version of MEM, called
EarthMEM, allows the user to characterize the sporadic
meteoroid environment,including the effects of gravitational
focusing and Earth shielding.
Additional Information:
Language: C/C++
Operating System: Windows NT/2000/XP
Hardware Requirements: 733 MHz Pentium III or faster, 50 Mbytes disk space, >512 Mbytes RAM.
Availability:
Input Description: Text file containing spacecraft state vectors – time (Julian Day), position (km), velocity (km/s); selection of other options done through GUI interface.
Point of Contact:
Heather McNamara
Marshall Space Flight Center
Phone: (256)
544-0686
E-mail:
heather.a.mcnamara@nasa.gov