Space Shuttle debris and meteoroid impacts

Abstract

This paper describes observations and analyses of meteoroid and debris impact damage to the Space Shuttle Orbiter over the past decade. Since 1992, NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter post-flight inspection procedures have been altered to allow systematic identification and sampling of meteoroid/debris impacts in selected areas of the vehicle. These areas include the crew module windows and radiator panels that line the interior of the payload bay doors. In addition, other significant impact damage is identified and sampled on other critical surfaces or exposed structures such as wing leading-edge panels, external thermal-protection materials, radiator interconnect lines, and Ku-band antenna components. Samples of the impact damage are obtained and subjected to scanning electron microscope energy dispersive X-ray analysis to determine elemental composition of impactor materials recovered from the impact site. Based on these results, the source of the impact damage is categorized as meteoroid or debris, and debris particle types are identified. Historical trends indicate a large variability in debris impact rates from mission-to-mission with higher impact rates than average occurring more regularly since 1998. Predictions of post-flight damage are compared to observed damage using BUMPER code and as-flown attitude timelines. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of COSPAR.

Melt-driven erosion in microparticle impact

“…In neither of these first regimes, i.e., rebound nor bonding, is material lost from the microparticle or the substrate. At higher impact velocities in the third regime, on the other hand, material loss can occur; velocities of ~km/s cause impact damage to, for instance, space vehicles and satellites 9 , 17 , 18 . However, such high-velocity erosion has been historically studied by post-mortem analysis only 19 , 20 .…”

Optimal Mission Abort Policy for Systems Operating in a Random Environment

“…We believe that the considered mission abort model can be applied to different fields ranging from space exploration (19,20) to mining (21) and other areas. For instance, to save the extremely expensive drilling equipment, the drilling mission can be aborted at some stages.…”

Chemically strengthened protection glasses for the applications of space solar cells

“…In our experiments, there wasn't consideration with meteoroid impact. [27][28][29] The flexural strength, hardness, morphology and transparence of the samples were investigated by Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA800, US), micro hardness instrument (Wilson-wolpert Turkon 2100B Vickers, US), the relative humidity was 50 ± 10% prior to performing the test and the stress rate was maintained at 0.00167 s −1 . Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM, JXA-840, Japan), Atomic Force Microscope (AFM, Nanoscope VI, US) and UV/visible spectrophotometer (Lambda 35, Japan), respectively.…”