The impact of neos and their fragments recorded from the ground : ongoing research lines of the spanish fireball network

Abstract

A continuous monitoring of the night sky all over Spain will be completed in 2009. This involves the recording over a very large surface area of 500,000 km2, but new CCD and video cameras operated by the Spanish Meteor and Fireball Network (SPMN) allows this target to be achieved. Through the use of these new techniques the SPMN can obtain new information regarding the dynamical processes that deliver meteorites to the Earth. It transpires that the main asteroid belt is not the only source of these fireballs, Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs) may also play a role. To obtain more information in this regard, new efforts are needed to compare the orbits of large meteoroids reaching the Earth with those of the members of NEO and JFC populations. By numerically integrating their orbits back in time it may be possible to identify meteoroids delivered by other mechanisms like such as catastrophic disruptions or collisions.