Resumen de Fake meteors set to probe high-up skies
Artificial meteors launched from satellites could one day help studying Earth's upper atmosphere. The upper atmosphere controls the size and shape of holes in the ozone layer, and can help in working out how the climate is changing. It's also where meteors burn up, appearing as showers of "shooting stars." To do this, Masaki Watanabe of Tokyo Metropolitan University and his colleagues propose to launch a fake meteor. A lightweight satellite in low Earth orbit--about 400 kilometers up--would fire small pellets at Earth. As the pellets burn up in the atmosphere, scientists on the ground would measure their temperatures using a spectrometer. Firing multiple pellets will allow data to be gathered on conditions in different locations. To test the idea, the team mounted pellets weighing less than 2 grams in a wind tunnel, and found that their light should be visible to the naked eye.
