The threshold at which a meteor shower becomes hazardous to spacecraft

TL;DR

This paper establishes a quantitative threshold to identify hazardous meteor showers, improving the accuracy of spacecraft risk assessments during periods of increased meteoroid activity.

Contribution

It introduces a new criterion for hazard assessment and applies it to existing meteor shower data to refine risk forecasting for spacecraft safety.

Findings

Identified specific meteor showers exceeding the hazard threshold.

Provided a method to prioritize showers for risk assessment.

Enhanced forecasting accuracy for spacecraft protection.

Abstract

Although the risk posed to spacecraft due to meteoroid impacts is dominated by sporadic meteoroids, meteor showers can raise this risk for short periods of time. NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office issues meteor shower forecasts that describe these periods of elevated risk, primarily for the purpose of helping plan extravehicular activities. These forecasts are constructed using a list of meteor shower parameters that has evolved over time to include newly discovered showers and incorporate improved measurements of their characteristics. However, at this point in time, more than a thousand meteor showers have been reported by researchers, many of which are extremely minor, are unconfirmed, or lack measurements of critical parameters. Thus, a comprehensive approach is no longer feasible. In this report we present a quantitative criterion for a potentially hazardous meteor shower and apply this criterion to the list of established meteor showers in order to determine which showers should be included in our annual forecasts.