Estimation of Pre-Atmospheric Meteoroid Mass and Velocity using SAAMER-OS Observations

The Earth is constantly being bombarded by meteoroids, which ablate upon entering the upper atmosphere and can be observed by ground-based systems as meteors. The Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar Orbital System (SAAMER-OS) is a multi-static meteor radar capable of observing thousands of meteors per day and measuring meteoroid orbits. In May 2022, the system was upgraded to also measure polarization characteristics of meteor echoes. Combined orbit and polarization measurements enabled the development of a methodology that integrates advanced full wave scattering and chemical ablation models to estimate the pre-atmospheric characteristics of meteoroids, such as initial velocity and mass. This system is now operational and produces daily datasets.
In this poster we present the current workflow used to produce these datasets and describe the processing that enables the estimation of pre-atmospheric meteoroid parameters from SAAMER-OS observations. We also report initial statistical findings derived from these mass and velocity products, including a preliminary investigation into the evolution of meteoroid ablation and deceleration processes in the upper atmosphere, and the detection of multiple meteoroid ablation regimes in the data.