A spacecraft is exposed to the risk of collision with orbital debris or meteoroids throughout its orbital lifetime. Part of small debris is produced as ejecta upon impact of particles on spacecraft outer surfaces. In order to mitigate this growing population of orbital debris and obtain a better knowledge of secondary debris production, it is proposed in this document to perform standardized tests on the various materials used for external surfaces.
The approach to assess the behaviour of materials under orbital debris or meteoroid impacts, uses an ejecta model under hypervelocity impact (HVI) to define simple parameters which are able to characterize ejecta production as total mass ejected, size partitioning, velocity, and direction. In order to get comparable results, well defined ground tests are proposed using readily available HVI ranges.
Results of ejecta production have to be implemented in a database which will help in the choice of spacecraft use materials during the design phase, in order to fulfill debris mitigation and to determine the small debris production over the total spacecraft life-time.
Test procedures to evaluate spacecraft materials ejecta upon hypervelocity impact
2007-06-01
6 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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