![]() As meteors travel along parallel paths in theġ P.M. These phenomena associated with a meteoroid impacting a planetary atmosphere are collectively termed a meteor (i.e., a plasma). When this stream intersects Earth, each particle (or meteoroid) colliding with Earth’s atmosphere produces heat, light, and ionization. Stream meteoroids have a common, recent (less than 100,000 years) origin and thus all follow nearly identical heliocentric orbits. ![]() The meteoroid population can be divided into two broad components: sporadic meteoroids and stream meteoroids. For sizes larger than 1 mm in LEO, orbital debris is the dominant impactor population. Beyond LEO, the flux of meteoroids up to the 5- to 10-cm-size range is the long-term averaged dominant impactor population for spacecraft, whereas in LEO meteoroids and orbital debris between 10 microns and 1 mm are comparable in flux. In contrast to the space debris environment, the meteoroid environment in near-Earth space is not affected by launch activity and subsequent operational practices. Flux refers to the number of meteoroids of a certain mass or larger crossing a fixed surface in space per unit time. This is also the size at which the meteoroid flux is two orders of magnitude lower than the space debris flux in portions of low Earth orbit (LEO). The lower bound represents solid particles, which, once created through collisions, are often expected to be on unbound orbits due to radiation pressure from the Sun the upper (arbitrary) limit represents meteoroids, which are so infrequent as to be negligible as primary impactors on spacecraft. The precise size limits applying to the term “meteoroid” have been debated extensively in the literature, 2 but for the purposes of this report an operational definition covers the size range from 1 micron to 10 cm in diameter. 1 Meteoroids are generated mainly from collisions between asteroids and the decay of comets, although a small percentage may originate from stellar activity outside the solar system. ![]() Meteoroids are small, solid particles, formally defined by the International Astronomical Union as being considerably larger than an atom or molecule and smaller than an asteroid. The Meteoroid Environment and Its Effects on Spacecraft
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