Screening tests for enhanced shielding against hypervelocity particle impacts for future unmanned spacecraft

Protection of components of unmanned spacecraft against particle impacts is typically provided by the spacecraft’s structure together with the intrinsic protection capabilities of the components themselves. Thus to increase the survivability of future spacecraft, one option is to enhance the protection already provided using enhanced materials and additional shielding. As part of the EU funded FP7 research project ReVuS (“Reducing the Vulnerability of Space systems”), the configurations of equipment typically found on board unmanned spacecraft were identified. For each of those configurations, potential solutions have been identified which enhance the robustness against particle impacts. The solutions are broken down into a number of shielding components that include e.g. additional protective layers made from aluminum, Kevlar, Nextel, stainless steel mesh and ceramics. To evaluate the characteristics and performances of these shielding components, a number of screening hypervelocity impact tests were performed. During these tests, representative configurations have been subjected to impacts of aluminum spheres of 3 mm and 5 mm diameter at a nominal impact velocity of 7 km/s. This paper describes the targets and presents and compares the results