• Colangeli, Luigi
• Palumbo, Pasquale
• Ferrini, G.
• Della Corte, Vincenzo
• Esposito, Francesca

Abstract

The problem of space debris in Earth orbit received a great interest since the last few years. The recent impulse on the activities in space has produced a considerable increase of knowledge on the debris population in the circum-terrestrial environment and a new one is expected in the next years. Hypervelocity impacts of artificial objects, sub-micron to centimeter sized, with a spacecraft constitute a potential risk to on-orbit hardware. In order to assess the risks of collision between orbital debris and spacecrafts, it is necessary to well characterise the debris population in the Earth orbit environment. In situ monitoring and modelling are complementary actions to be performed in order to reach this aim. A number of well defined spatial technologies have been proposed to be dedicated to the characterisation of dynamical, chemical and physical properties of orbital debris, mainly in the following directions: - impact detection and momentum measurement of slow and fast particles by means of piezoelectric sensors; - optical detection of micron sized particles at low speed, by means of light scattered from a laser curtain; - elemental analysis of fast particles based on ToF spectrometry on plasma produced after particle impact on a target; - transit and trajectory detection by means of charge induced on metallic grids; An important contribute comes also by the non destructive collection in aerogel of orbital debris and the characterisation of captured particles properties by means of laboratory analyses once the samples have been returned to Earth. In the present work we will report the activities performed in our laboratory concerning the development of techniques for in situ monitoring and for collection by aerogel of debris and meteoroids....

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• spectrometry
• elemental analysis