Sigrid Elschot
Stanford University, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
About 100,000 kilograms of space material, mostly meteoroids, falls into Earth's atmosphere every day. Meteoroids are small rocky and icy bits of debris left by collisions between asteroids and other objects.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
Physics
- Topics
meteoroids
meteors
upper atmosphere
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Determine how meteoroids deposit mass in the thermosphere and create localized regions of dense extraterrestrial material, using a new combined Direct Simulation Monte Carlo – Finite Element Method (DSMC-FEM) model of meteoroid material loss.
- Model how meteor plasma forms and expands by modifying an existing Particle-In-Cell algorithm, then map radar signal strength to plasma density with a Finite-Difference Time-Domain model of radio waves.
- Use High-Power Large-Aperture radar data to identify small-scale neutral density structures over one location and test whether neutral density correlates with when meteor trail echoes begin.
- Assess the long-term effects of increased meteoric and satellite-derived material on the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT).
More about the research
As they burn up, they leave a trail of plasma, an electrically charged gas, that we see as a meteor or shooting star. This burning deposits metals high in the atmosphere and creates the metal and ion layers of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT), the region roughly between 50 and 150 km up. Scientists still do not know well how fast this mass is deposited. That gap matters more now, because a growing number of de-orbiting satellites is expected to add a lot more metal to the upper atmosphere.
Why it matters
Better knowledge of the upper atmosphere could help predict effects that disrupt spacecraft: collisions and failures, shorter satellite lifetimes, and communication outages. This matters to satellite operators and space weather forecasting. The new simulation techniques could also help with spacecraft design, parachute dynamics and hypersonic reentry vehicles.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tomoko Matsuo
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify the causes of day-to-day and longitude-to-longitude changes in the equatorial electrojet, a strong current near the magnetic equator, by assimilating ground and Swarm satellite magnetic data into the TIEGCM upper-atmosphere model.
James Sherwood
University of Massachusetts-Lowell, MA·Engineering
Establish a tenure-track faculty line in Electrical and Computer Engineering focused on space weather, especially how disturbances in the ionosphere affect communication and navigation technologies.
Brentha Thurairajah
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how much of the large-scale gravity wave activity in the thermosphere comes from the troposphere versus from sources above the stratosphere, using controlled SD-WACCM-X whole-atmosphere model simulations.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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