Word: meteoroids
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When the Leonid meteoroid shower streaked across the sky in 1833, people in the northeastern United States took the deluge of bright, flying particles as a sign of the impending apocalypse...
...that velocity, says Guenter Riegler, a NASA senior scientist, a meteoroid as small as a dust particle could blast a hole nearly half an inch across in a solar panel or a layer of insulation. Equally threatening is the intense heat of impact, which would instantly vaporize the meteoroid and convert it to an ionized gas, or plasma, that would shock the spacecraft with an electrostatic charge. "If that charge got into some of your data circuitry," Riegler says, "it could wipe out data...
...side of the craft facing the comet is covered with a double shield, one made of aluminum and the other of Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests. Even then, Giotto is not expected to survive the encounter unharmed. A collision with a large dust particle or small meteoroid could ruin the entire operation. "The biggest danger we face," says Bonnet, "is that the craft's antenna will be knocked out of alignment and we will lose control over...
...fact, Skylab's history of glitches demonstrated both the futility of taking technological shortcuts and the agility of men working in space to remedy unexpected ailments. When Skylab was launched by a Saturn 5 booster rocket on May 14, 1973, a large section of its meteoroid and heat shield ripped away, taking one of its prematurely extended solar-energy wings with it. A second wing jammed in a retracted position. The craft both overheated in orbit and was dangerously underpowered. But in the space age's first salvage mission, on May 25, 1973, Astronauts Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. and Joseph...
...redundant system are still working). The astronauts will carry up a replacement gyro. Already on board is a twin-pole awning. It is designed to replace the makeshift sunshade erected by the first crew to protect the orbital workshop's bare spot where it lost its thermal and meteoroid shielding...