THE MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE AS A METEOROID DETECTOR

We investigate the plausibility of detecting meteors from the surface of Mars, We estimate the flux of high-speed photographic meteoroids at the orbit of Mars to be similar to 50% that at Earth. Because the atm ospheric densities of the Earth and Mars are comparable at a height of 120 km, close to where meteor ablation occurs on Earth, we also expec t martian meteors to ablate at heights similar to those on Earth. By n umerical integration we have modeled the intensity of an ''asteroidal' ' particle and a ''cometary'' particle as they enter the atmosphere, u sing particle masses in the range 10(-8) to 10(2) g. We conclude that high-speed (greater than or equal to 30 km sec(-1)) meteoroids will ha ve the same magnitude in both atmospheres; lower speed meteoroids will be dimmer in Mars' atmosphere. We suggest that future missions to Mar s should include meteor observation programs which would permit direct measurements of the meteoroid complex in another region of the solar system as well as providing important information on the structure and time variability of the martian atmosphere. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.