Formation, Structure, and Detectability of the Geminids Meteoroid Stream

The Geminids meteoroid stream produces one of the most intense meteor showers at Earth. It is an unusual stream in that its parent body is understood to be an asteroid, (3200) Phaethon, unlike most streams which are formed via ongoing cometary activity. Until recently, our primary understanding of this stream came from Earth-based measurements of the Geminids meteor shower. However, the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft has transited near the core of the stream close to its perihelion and provides a new platform to better understand this unique stream. Here, we create a dynamical model of the Geminids meteoroid stream, calibrate its total density to Earth-based measurements, and compare this model to recent observations of the dust environment near the Sun by PSP. For the formation mechanisms considered, we find the core of the meteoroid stream predominantly lies interior to its parent body orbit and expect grains in the stream to be $\gtrsim$10 $μ$m in radius. Data-model comparisons of the location of the stream relative to Phaethon's orbit are more consistent with a catastrophic formation scenario, in contrast to cometary formation. Finally, while PSP transits very near the core of the stream, the impact rate expected by Geminids meteoroids is orders of magnitude below the impact rates observed by PSP, and hence undetectable in-situ. We similarly expect the upcoming DESTINY+ mission to be unable to detect appreciable quantities of Geminids grains far from (3200) Phaethon.