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Comets and asteroids are recognized by the scientists and the governments of all countries in the world to be one of the most significant threats to the development and even the existence of our civilization. Preventing this threat includes studying the motion of large meteors through the atmosphere that is accompanied by various physical and chemical phenomena. Of particular interest to such studies are the meteors whose trajectories have been recorded and whose fragments have been found on Earth. Here, we study one of such cases. We develop a model for the motion and destruction of natural bodies in the Earth’s atmosphere, focusing on the Benešov bolid (EN070591), a bright meteor registered in 1991 in the Czech Republic by the European Observation System. Unique data, that includes the radiation spectra, is available for this bolid. We simulate the aeroballistics of the Benešov meteoroid and of its fragments, taking into account destruction due to thermal and mechanical processes. We compute the velocity of the meteoroid and its mass ablation using the equations of the classical theory of meteor motion, taking into account the variability of the mass ablation along the trajectory. The fragmentation of the meteoroid is considered using the model of sequential splitting and the statistical stress theory, that takes into account the dependency of the mechanical strength on the length scale. We compute air flows around a system of bodies (shards of the meteoroid) in the regime where mutual interplay between them is essential. To that end, we develop a method of simulating air flows based on a set of grids that allows us to consider fragments of various shapes, sizes, and masses, as well as arbitrary positions of the fragments relative to each other. Due to inaccuracies in the early simulations of the motion of this bolid, its fragments could not be located for about 23 years. Later and more accurate simulations have allowed researchers to locate four of its fragments rather far from the location expected earlier. Our simulations of the motion and destruction of the Benešov bolid show that its interaction with the atmosphere is affected by multiple factors, such as the mass and the mechanical strength of the bolid, the parameters of its motion, the mechanisms of destruction, and the interplay between its fragments.

Within the framework of the actual problem of comet-asteroid danger, the physical processes causing the destruction and fragmentation of meteor bodies in the Earth’s atmosphere are numerically investigated. Based on the developed physicalmathematical models that determines the movements of space objects of natural origin in the atmosphere and their interaction with it, the fall of three, one of the largest and by some parameters unusual bolides in the history of meteoritics, are considered: Tunguska, Vitim and Chelyabinsk. Their singularity lies in the absence of any material meteorite remains and craters in the area of the alleged crash site for the first two bodies and the non-detection, as it is assumed, of the main mother body for the third body (due to the too small amount of mass of the fallen fragments compared to the estimated mass). The effect of aerodynamic loads and heat flows on these bodies are studied, which leads to intensive surface mass loss and possible mechanical destruction. The velocities of the studied celestial bodies and the change in their masses are determined from the modernized system of equations of the theory of meteoric physics. An important factor that is taken into account here is the variability of the meteorite mass entrainment parameter under the action of heat fluxes (radiation and convective) along the flight path. The process of fragmentation of meteoroids in this paper is considered within the framework of a progressive crushing model based on the statistical theory of strength, taking into account the influence of the scale factor on the ultimate strength of objects. The phenomena and effects arising at various kinematic and physical parameters of each of these bodies are revealed. In particular, the change in the ballistics of their flight in the denser layers of the atmosphere, consisting in the transition from the fall mode to the ascent mode. At the same time, the following scenarios of the event can be realized: 1) the return of the body back to outer space at its residual velocity greater than the second cosmic one; 2) the transition of the body to the orbit of the Earth satellite at a residual velocity greater than the first cosmic one; 3) at lower values of the residual velocity of the body, its return after some time to the fall mode and falling out at a considerable distance from the intended crash site. It is the implementation of one of these three scenarios of the event that explains, for example, the absence of material traces, including craters, in the case of the Tunguska bolide in the vicinity of the forest collapse. Assumptions about the possibility of such scenarios have been made earlier by other authors, and in this paper their implementation is confirmed by the results of numerical calculations.