# Measuring the meteoroid environments of the planets with meteor detectors on Earth

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how Earth-based meteor observations can be used to infer the meteoroid environments of other planets, providing a new method for studying planetary space environments without in situ measurements.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to reconstruct planetary meteoroid environments from Earth-based meteor data, extending the potential for planetary space environment analysis.

## Key findings

- Mars has similar sporadic meteor sources as Earth.
- Reconstruction of planetary environments is feasible with large meteor datasets.
- Method enables ground-truthing of meteoroid models without in situ sampling.

## Abstract

We describe how meteors recorded at the Earth can be used to partly reconstruct the meteoroid environments of the planets if a large sample (i.e. millions of orbits at a minimum) is available. The process involves selecting from the Earth-based sample those meteors which passed near a planet's orbit prior to arriving at the Earth, and so carry information about the planetary meteoroid environment. Indeed this process can be extended to any location in the Solar System, though some regions of space are better sampled than others. From such a reconstruction performed with data from the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR), we reveal that Mars has apex, helion, anti-helion and toroidal sporadic sources, much as Earth does. Such reconstructions, albeit partial, have the potential to provide a wealth of detail about planetary meteoroid environments, and to allow for the ground-truthing of model meteoroid populations without in situ sampling.