From a report submitted by Chloe Kadir, The University of Machester
The Global Meteor Network (GMN) provides continuous, standardised, multi-station observations of meteors and fireballs using more than 1,600 video cameras across 45 countries. This project used GMN observations to investigate the flux and origins of meteorite-dropping fireballs reaching Earth.
Understanding the flux and physical properties of material entering Earth’s atmosphere is important for characterising the small near-Earth object population, assessing the behaviour and survivability of impactors during atmospheric entry, and linking recovered meteorites with their source regions in the Solar System. One of the benchmark observational estimates of meteorite flux was produced by Halliday et al. (1989) using photographic observations from the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Project (MORP) in the Canadian Prairies. Modern global observing networks now provide an opportunity to revisit these measurements with greater observational coverage.
Meteoritical Society funding partially supporteed a three-month research visit to the Western Meteor Physics Group at Western University in Canada, from May to August 2026. The visit enabled me to work directly with researchers involved in the development and operation of the Global Meteor Network (GMN) on my project investigating the flux and origins of meteorite-dropping fireballs.
During the visit, I worked with Prof. Denis Vida and his collaborators in the group to re-measure GMN fireball observations to improve their astrometry, and we subsequently reconstructed their atmospheric trajectories, velocities and heliocentric orbits. We used the terminal portions of the observed trajectories to estimate surviving meteorite masses and worked towards deriving an updated measurement of the meteorite flux at Earth’s surface. The reconstructed orbits were also used to investigate the likely near-Earth object source regions of these fireballs, connecting potential meteorite-dropping events with dynamical delivery pathways from the asteroid belt.
The results of this project were written as a conference abstract and presented at the Europlanet Science Congress 2026 (The Hague, the Netherlands; September 2026: https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2026-92). The results are currently being prepared as a manuscript for publication.