NASA's Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) 3 and its ability to replicate spacecraft impact rates

TL;DR

This paper presents NASA's MEM 3, an updated meteoroid environment model that improves predictions of impact rates on spacecraft by incorporating detailed distributions and comparing results with observed impact data.

Contribution

MEM 3 introduces enhanced modeling of meteoroid properties and correlations, improving impact rate predictions for spacecraft safety assessments.

Findings

MEM 3 better matches observed impact rates on LDEF and Pegasus satellites.

Incorporates improved velocity, directionality, and density distributions.

Provides a validated tool for spacecraft risk analysis.

Abstract

Meteoroids pose one of the largest risks to spacecraft outside of low Earth orbit. In order to correctly predict the rate at which meteoroids impact and damage spacecraft, environment models must describe the mass, directionality, velocity, and density distributions of meteoroids. NASA's Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) is one such model; MEM 3 is an updated version of the code that better captures the correlation between directionality and velocity and incorporates a bulk density distribution. This paper describes MEM 3 and compares its predictions with the rate of large particle impacts seen on the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and the Pegasus II and III satellites.