Examination of 29.37 sq m of thick aluminum plates from the LDEF, which were exposed to the meteoroid and man-made orbital debris environments for 5.8 years, revealed 606 craters that were 0.5 mm in diameter or larger. Most were nearly hemispherical. There was a large variation in the number density of craters around the three axis gravity gradient stabilized spacecraft. A new model of the near-Earth meteoroid environment gives good agreement with the crater fluxes measured on the fourteen faces of the LDEF. The man-made orbital debris model of Kessler, which predicts that 16 pct. of the craters would be caused by man-made debris, is plausible. No chemical analyses of impactor residue that will distinguish between meteoroids and man-made debris is yet available.


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    Title :

    Large Craters on the Meteoroid and Space Debris Impact Experiment


    Contributors:
    D. H. Humes (author)

    Publication date :

    1992


    Size :

    20 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English






    Small Craters on the Meteoroid and Space Debris Impact Experiment

    Humes, D. H. / National Aeronautics and Space Administration / AIAA | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995



    Morphology of meteoroid and space debris craters on LDEF metal targets

    Love, S. G. / Brownlee, D. E. / King, N. L. et al. | NTRS | 1994