Macro-Scale Findings of the DebriSat Debris Field Obtained from X-Rays of the Catch Panels

The DebriSat project analyzes the debris from a hypervelocity impact test conducted on a 56 kg-simulated satellite target in 2014. Its purpose is to generate a comprehensive database of the size, mass, material, shape, and the radar and optical properties of fragments generated from orbital collisions of modern-built spacecraft. Three hundred ninety-one foam catch panels from the DebriSat test have been X-rayed to locate the particles within them for subsequent extraction and assessment. The data from the tens of thousands of extracted particles has heretofore been the focus of the debris assessment. The work presented here connects the X-ray sample location images to reconstruct the 3D distribution of the entire fragment cloud. Although some errors are inherent to the process, this 3D database is valuable for qualitative studies of size and energy distributions. Further, the 3D database can indicate the extent of bending or breaking of the fragments as they decelerated to full capture. By virtue of its full sphere perspective, the 3D database allows graphical insight to the physics of the collision and breakup. This 3D representation has been developed as a “point and click” graphical interface to retrieve the full data set on individual recovered and assessed fragments within the growing database. Overall, this macro-level screening technique has added enormous insight to the experiment in unexpected ways.