Periastra : Participants : Jean-Louis Rault FRIPON

The FRIPON Science Project (Fireball Recovery and Inter-Planetary Observation Network) was designed to study interplanetary matter by detecting and characterizing fireballs (orbit, trajectory, size, etc..) and to recover fresh fallen meteorites to be analyzed in our laboratories.

The core program comprises five main scientific sub-projects:

Detection of fireballs and computation of their trajectories and orbits
Detection of meteorite fall event: computation of meteorite strewn fields, organization of meteorite search
Statistical determination of the origins and possibly of the parent bodies of the detected fireballs
Statistical estimate of the interplanetary particle impact flux
In-depth analysis of the recovered samples.

The FRIPON scientific project is operated by an international team of scientists, which combines the national teams of the countries involved. The team develops and maintains an observational network of Internet connected cameras and radio receivers as well as the tools to retrieve and store the data in a database from which it can be accessed following the policy described hereafter. All the programs developed and used in the FRIPON network are open source, and the scientific methods are shared and optimized to achieve the best use of data. Scientific coordination and animation of the network insures the efficiency of the collaborative work.

Audio record consisting in a compilation of various meteor radio echoes.

Image showing an example of spectral analysis of such a meteor radio echo.