Moving of a blunt body through the dense atmosphere under conditions of severe aerodynamic heating and ablation

Consideration is given for radiative-convective heat transfer in the vicinity of stagnation streamline in the bow shock layer of blunt body moving through the dense atmosphere at velocities up to 50 km/sec. It is shown that radiative fluxes on non-ablating body surface are subjected to an approximate similarity relations.The effects of gaseous ablation layer on radiative fluxes reaching the body surface is investigated. The results obtained are used to treat the available data on trajectories and light curves of bright fireballs.The treatment procedure proposed is shown to provide reliable estimates of the major meteorite parameters such as their mass, density and size.