Development of Space Debris Protection Structure

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The international space station, which will be launched in the late 1990's, is exposed to the risk from hypervelocity impact of debris and micrometeorites. Completion of the protection system from debris impact is an urgent problem. The simulator capable of acceleration of debris model over 10km/s is needed to conduct the impact study. Prof. E. Igenbergs of Technical University of Munich, who is one of this project team, is an inventor of the plasma accelerator. He succeeded 20km/s acceleration of 100mum glass beads using his new accelerator. However it is difficult to accelerate effectively 300mum or larger beads using his plasma gun. We conducted successfully acceleration of 500mum glass beads up to 15km/s by cooperation with Technical University of Munich. The value, 500mum diameter bead and 15km/s is the world record. The effective protection structure is the dual element shield structure. It is required to increase of thickness of the bumper plate and gap between main wall and bumper with increasing impact velocity. A double layer bumper plate consisted of high and low shock impedance materials were tested for reducing weight and gap distance of the protection structure. 0.5mm glass beads were used as a model of debris. The double layered bumper plates consisted of 2024 Al alloy-copper and 2024 Al-aluninum nitride ceramic were tested. It was founded that protection ability of the bumper consisted of front-aluminum alloy and rear-aluninum nitride ceramics is very high for the hypervelocity impact.