Measurement of the Meteoroid Flux at Mars
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In the fall of 2005, a dedicated meteor observing campaign was carried out by the Panoramic Camera (Pancam) onboard the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit to determine the viability of using MER cameras as meteor detectors and to obtain the first experimental estimate of the meteoroid flux at Mars. Our observing targets included both the sporadic meteoroid background and two predicted martian meteor showers: one associated with 1P/Halley and a potential stream associated with 2001/R1 LONEOS. A total of 353 images covering 2.7 h of net exposure time were analyzed with no conclusive meteor detections. From these data, an upper limit to the background meteoroid flux at Mars is estimated to be 4.4 × 10 −6 meteoroids km −2 h −1 for meteoroids with mass larger than 4 g. For comparison, the estimated flux to this mass limit at the Earth is 10 −6 meteoroids km −2 h −1 [Grun, E., Zook, H.A., Fechtig, H., Giese, R.H., 1985. Icarus 62, 244–272]. This result is qualitatively consistent, within error bounds, with theoretical models predicting martian fluxes of ∼ 50 % that at Earth for meteoroids of mass 10 −3 – 10 1 g [Adolfsson, L.G., Gustafson, B.A.S., Murray, C.D., 1996. Icarus 119, 144–152]. The MER cameras, even using the most sensitive mode of operation, should expect to see on average only one coincident meteor on of order 40–150 h of total exposure time based on these same theoretical martian flux estimates. To more meaningfully constrain these flux models, a longer total integrated exposure time or more sensitive camera is needed. Our analysis also suggests that the event reported as the first martian meteor [Selsis, F., Lemmon, M.T., Vaubaillon, J., Bell, J.F., 2005. Nature 435, 581] is more likely a grazing cosmic ray impact, which we show to be a major source of confusion with potential meteors in all Pancam images.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".