This artifact is a portion of the backup spacecraft for Explorer 23. Michael Starks, bench scientist and electronics engineer, Space Vehicles Directorate‘s Battlespace Environment Division. In addition, the spacecraft was designed to provide data on the effects of the space environment on the operation of capacitor penetration detectors and solar-cell power supplies. 'The micro-meteoroid impact experiment was going nowhere until we decided to shoot the multi-layer insulation, which serves as the thermal blanket covering a spacecraft and is composed primarily of plastics,' said Dr.
To avoid such damage, a ship must be equipped with some type of deflector shielding to prevent the rock particles from hitting the hull. Micrometeoroids posed a hazard to spacecraft, causing damage to the hull of a ship due to the impact of the rock particles against the hull at very high velocity. Explorer 23 carried stainless steel pressurized-cell penetration detectors, impact detectors, and cadmium sulfide cell detectors to obtain data on the size, number, distribution, and momentum of dust particles in the near-earth environment. A micrometeoroid was a small meteoroid-like fragment floating through space. The cylindrically shaped spacecraft, about 61 cm in diameter and 234 cm long, was built around the spent fourth stage of the Scout launch vehicle, which remained as part of the orbiting satellite. Its purpose was to obtain data on the near-Earth meteoroid environment, and provide an accurate estimate of the danger posed to spacecraft structures by meteoroid penetration.
The Explorer 23 micrometeoroid satellite (S 55C) was the third in the series of S 55 micrometeoroid satellites orbited by NASA. Damage from Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) impacts poses a substantial risk for the loss of crew for the currently planned CEV missions to the.