The Whipple shield or Whipple bumper, invented by Fred Whipple, [1] is a type of spaced armor shielding to protect crewed and uncrewed spacecraft from hypervelocity impact / collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital debris whose velocities generally range between 3 and 18 kilometres per second (1.9 and 11.2 mi/s).

Jun 7, 2000 · The Whipple shield is designed to shadow the spacecraft to protect it during the high speed encounter with particles in the cometary coma. Bumper shields are composite panels which disrupt particles as they impact.

From Apollo through Space Station, the Whipple shield concept has provided the baseline for shielding against the impact of micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD). Over the range of impact velocities relevant for Earth-orbiting spacecraft, the performance of a Whipple shield is characterized in three

Jul 20, 2021 · Whipple shields are low-weight shielding barriers which need to withstand hypervelocity impacts (shown in Fig. 2) and meteoroid hits. It comprises of a thin external bumper located at a uniform space from the core spacecraft barrier.

Dec 20, 2024 · Build a model Whipple shield and test how its ability to absorb impacts changes with debris speed. Space debris, also called space junk or orbital debris, can range in size from tiny chips of paint to pieces of broken rockets to entire defunct satellites.

Feb 26, 2018 · Objects in space are moving fast — craft in low-Earth orbit whizz by at around 17,000 miles per hour — and we can’t make a single shield thick enough to protect against that kind of speed. So, engineers have turned to something called a Whipple shield, named for its creator, Fred Whipple.

Dec 1, 2021 · Whipple shield, a dual-wall system, as well as its improved structures, is widely applied to defend the hypervelocity impact of space debris (projectile). This paper reviews the studies about the mechanism and process of protection against hypervelocity impacts using …

Jun 12, 2023 · The Whipple shield, invented by Fred Whipple in the 1940s, protects spacecraft from micrometeoroids through a layered design. It includes an outer bumper layer that disperses impact energy, reducing damage risk.

The dual-wall Whipple shield is the shield of choice for lightweight, long-duration flight. The shield uses an initial sacrificial wall to initiate fragmentation and melt an impacting threat that expands over a void before hitting a subsequent shield wall of a critical component.

Jan 1, 2009 · Whipple shields were first proposed as a means of protecting spacecraft from the impact of micrometeoroids in 1947 [1] and are currently in use as micrometeoroid and orbital debris shields on modern spacecraft.