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4w ago

SwRI Develops Lab-Tested Spacecraft 'Black Box' for Orbital Debris Impacts

Validated in hypervelocity tests, the device captures detailed impact forensics across time, location, size, speed, composition.

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Illustration of space junk orbiting the Earth. Space junk ranges from the remains of failed launches to defunct satellites and unsecured tools that drifted away from orbiting spacecrafts. It can cause harm or destruction to other objects travelling at high speeds in the low-Earth orbit, such as satellites and spacecrafts
Image: © dottedhippo | iStock
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Overview

  • The system integrates a sensor-embedded structural panel with onboard processing to detect strikes and derive post-impact parameters.
  • Hypervelocity trials at SwRI’s light gas gun targeted instrumented panels to replicate orbital collisions, with results published in the 2024 17th Hypervelocity Impact Symposium (DOI: 10.1115/HVIS2024-011).
  • Designed for external mounting or structural integration, it functions as an on-board recorder that flags otherwise unseen hits and transmits data to Earth.
  • SwRI says the data could guide more resilient spacecraft designs and, if networked, support alerts to nearby satellites after a strike.
  • With full-scale lab validation complete, SwRI is seeking funding to build a flight-ready, space-qualified unit and evaluate paths toward a debris-mapping network.