From orbit to ground: pre-impact meteorite strewn field predictions for imminent impactors and meteorite recovery

Abstract

The flux of meteoroids reaching the Earth is continuous, ranging from microscopic grains to occasional metre and decametre scale bodies. The smallest ones fully ablate in the upper atmosphere, whereas sufficiently large or strong objects survive entry and deposit fragments on the ground as meteorites. Predicting where these fragments land, and reconstructing the atmospheric trajectory and fragmentation sequence that produced them, is central both to hazard assessment and to the recovery of freshly fallen material. The accuracy of such predictions, however, remains limited by poorly constrained fragmentation processes and by sparse, heterogeneous observational coverage of individual events. Traditional strewn field simulations rely on detailed fireball data and event-specific assumptions on fragment masses, aerodynamics, and breakup. These approaches are effective for well-instrumented events, but their applicability degrades rapidly when observations are sparse, often resulting in huge uncertainties. We present an ab initio framework predicting strewn fields of near-Earth asteroids directly from pre-impact orbital solutions. It propagates luminous trajectory and dark flight using a physics-based translational dynamics model and realistic atmospheric conditions, without requiring fireball triangulation or event-specific tuning. Validation against recent asteroid falls with recovered meteorites shows agreement with observations, with nominal solutions reproducing fall locations within 100-200 m. The new method has been integrated into the ESA Aegis pipeline, which now enables hours-ahead computation of impact locations, supporting recovery efforts, minimizing contamination, and, where warranted by object size and predicted ground hazard, civil-protection decision making.