U.S. Space Force releases new bolide data to NASA

NASA and the U.S. Space Force recently inked an agreement authorizing the public release of data collected by the U.S. government sensors on bolides, large bright meteors that explode in the atmosphere, for the benefit of scientific communities, the space agency said on Thursday.

The data comprises information on the changing brightness of these objects as they pass through Earth's atmosphere, called light curves, that could enhance the planetary defense community’s current ability to model the effects of impacts by larger asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.

With this agreement, the planetary defense experts will have access to even more detailed data - specifically, light curve information that captures the optical intensity variation during the several seconds of an object’s breakup in the atmosphere. The data will be available to scientists as soon as it is properly archived, with the reported events and made easily accessible.

"The release of these new bolide data demonstrates another key area of collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Space Force and helps further the pursuit of improved capabilities for understanding these objects and our preparedness to respond to the impact hazard NEOs pose to Earth," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters. 

#PlanetaryDefense experts are about to have access to even more data on bolides—which are meteors too small to reach the ground but large enough to explode upon impact with our atmosphere—thanks to an agreement between @NASA & @SpaceForceDoD Learn more: https://t.co/YKhMkVjgQx pic.twitter.com/N2eS6rvUBr

— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) April 7, 2022

Notable bolide events in this released data set include 2022 EB5, a small asteroid approximately 2 meters in size that impacted the atmosphere southwest of Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island nearly 300 miles off the east coast of Greenland and northeast of Iceland in March 2022 as well as a meteor that was detected on Jan 8, 2014.