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A research program was funded by the European space agency (ESA) to improve and optimize the shields used to protect the manned elements of the international space station (ISS) against impacts of micro-meteoroids and orbital debris. After a review of existing shielding systems and after a series of light gas gun (LGG) experiments to screen interesting new materials and configurations, the research focused on shields with a metallic outer bumper, an intermediate stuffing and an inner metallic wall (representing the pressure shell of a manned spacecraft). Additional LGG experiments were performed on several configurations, with bumpers containing aluminum foam or made from titanium and aluminum super-alloys and with several combinations of stuffing materials. The comparison of the test results showed that ceramic cloth (Nextel) plus aramid fabric (both 2D and 2.5D Kevlar weaving) used as intermediate bumper gave a good protection compared to the overall area density requested. Configurations with by-layered aluminum foam bumpers (sandwich panels with asymmetric Al face sheets and a core made from Al foam) and Kevlar stuffing showed excellent resistance to normal impacts at about 6.5 km/s. However, the influence of material properties varying from batch to batch and threshold phenomena made ranking among the tested options rather difficult. The test campaign showed that it was rather difficult to improve over the already good ballistic performances of the debris shields developed by Alenia Spazio for the ISS manned elements. The by-layered Al-foam bumper and Kevlar stuffing configuration was selected for additional tests, including low velocity and oblique impacts, to develop ballistic limit curves.

Shielding is the only practical countermeasure for the exposure to cosmic radiation during space travel. It is well known that light, hydrogenated materials, such as water and polyethylene, provide the best shielding against space radiation. Kevlar and Nextel are two materials of great interest for spacecraft shielding because of their known ability to protect human space infrastructures from meteoroids and debris. We measured the response to simulated heavy-ion cosmic radiation of these shielding materials and compared it to polyethylene, Lucite (PMMA), and aluminum. As proxy to galactic nuclei we used 1 GeV n iron or titanium ions. Both physics and biology tests were performed. The results show that Kevlar, which is rich in carbon atoms (about 50% in number), is an excellent space radiation shielding material. Physics tests show that its effectiveness is close (80-90%) to that of polyethylene, and biology data suggest that it can reduce the chromosomal damage more efficiently than PMMA. Nextel is less efficient as a radiation shield, and the expected reduction on dose is roughly half that provided by the same mass of polyethylene. Both Kevlar and Nextel are more effective than aluminum in the attenuation of heavy-ion dose.

This paper presents the results of a set of experiments aimed at discovering the main features of impact-induced vibrations on all-aluminum honeycomb sandwich panels, representative of the GOCE satellite's top floor, which is exposed to the orbital debris environment. The activity focused on the characterization of the vibrations induced in the vicinity of internal payloads by hypervelocity impacts occurring on the vehicle's external shell. More than 30 tests were realized by launching 0.8–2.3 mm aluminum projectiles in the velocity range 4–5.5 km/s on targets with tri-axial accelerometer assemblies mounted on both the front and rear face of the panel, at a nominal distance of 150 mm from the impact point. It was found that a hypervelocity impact produces in both the front and rear side of the sandwich panel a vibration environment which can be described through the shock response spectrum (SRS) of three different types of waves that can be distinguished on the basis of the acceleration direction: out-of-plane, in-plane longitudinal and in-plane shear. The influence of projectile mass and velocity on SRS appeared to vary with frequency, with the most significant difference in the range between ∼103 and ∼104 Hz. The results of whole experimental set were used to derive an interpolation law through standard techniques of nonlinear fit. The empirical equation obtained makes it possible to predict the near-field vibration environment produced by hypervelocity impacts with debris having given size and velocity, reproducing all the test data with an average uncertainty of ±6 dB.

This paper presents an overview of the hypervelocity impact test campaign ongoing in the frame of the ESA contract “spacecraft disturbances from hypervelocity impact”. The project aims at analyzing the propagation of shocks due to hypervelocity impacts from the external shell of a spacecraft to its internal components. The object of the study is the GOCE satellite, which has been recognized to be very sensitive to small disturbances because of its payload that has been designed to measure even very low acceleration levels. In the first step presented hereafter, the test campaign has been focused on the qualification of the background environment inside the impact chamber and on the determination of the vibration levels induced by perforating and non-perforating hypervelocity projectiles on simple aluminum plates. The results currently obtained and a preliminary data analysis will be presented in the following.