Scientists at Moscow State University (MSU) have unveiled a novel approach to shield spacecraft and satellites from high-velocity debris in near-Earth orbit. The announcement was conveyed to socialbites.ca by the university’s press service.
Spacecraft in orbit face a real threat from fast-moving fragments. Traditional steel shields require thickness and mass that exceed practical limits for launch and operation, making them impractical for long-term use in orbit.
The new protective concept centers on screens built from energy-absorbing relaxation materials. These screens use a honeycomb architecture composed of many cells filled with a gas-liquid mixture designed to absorb and redistribute impact energy.
When a debris fragment strikes the screen, the kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy within the cell walls and the contained fluid. This energy transformation helps disperse the impact over a larger area and across multiple directions, reducing the energy transmitted to the protected satellite or spacecraft.
According to Nikolai Smirnov, head of the Laboratory of Wave Processes at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University and Professor Emeritus, the project focuses on computational predictive modeling of a honeycomb shield with thin-walled cells filled with liquid. The concept leverages the pressure-transmitting properties of the gas to spread the load in all directions, turning impact energy into heat and into the destruction energy of the honeycomb cell walls. The greater the energy absorbed by the cellular shield, the less energy reaches the protected structure. This insight was shared with socialbites.ca by Smirnov.
In practical terms, this shielding approach could reduce the weight burden of protective systems for future orbital stations, while also lowering the costs associated with delivering protective elements to near-Earth space.
Earlier work from Russian researchers explored durable transparent protection for satellite solar panels, illustrating a broader effort to improve satellite resilience without imposing prohibitive mass penalties. That line of inquiry complements the honeycomb debris shield concept by expanding protective options across different spacecraft subsystems.