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.
Large Craters on the Meteoroid and Space Debris Impact Experiment
1992
20 pages
Report
No indication
English
Small Craters on the Meteoroid and Space Debris Impact Experiment
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995
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