Episode 12 - 13
Space Junk & Shield Technology
In this episode, we explore an innovative project designed to help the Great Barrier Reef. It’s called Virtual Reef Diver, and the project was named by ABC Science as its 2018 Citizen Science Project for National Science Week. The best part of the project is that you, or anyone in Australia or around the world, can help with the project from the comfort of your home or office.
ACEMS Communications and Media Officer Tim Macuga hosts this episode. He interviews the project leader for Virtual Reef Diver, ACEMS Associate Investigator Dr Erin Peterson.
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Extended Version of Episode 13 (Part 2)
Dr Shannon Ryan is a Discipline Leader in Land Vehicle Survivability at Defence Science and Technology Group, responsible for armour protection against ballistic threats. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at UNSW Canberra’s School of Engineering and Information Technology.
Shannon’s previous research work dealt with spacecraft protection against micrometeoroids and orbital debris, including positions at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Fraunhofer Ernst Mach Institute in Germany. Shannon is also one of Sevvandi’s co-authors, where they investigated the application of machine learning techniques to analyze hypervelocity impacts.
- Shannon’s staff page at DST Group: https://www.dst.defence.gov.au/staff/dr-shannon-ryan
- The Hypervelocity Impact Technology research group that Shannon previously worked for: https://hvit.jsc.nasa.gov/
- Shannon’s paper discussing a new analytic model for Whipple shield impacts: Miller, J.E, Bjorkman, M.D., Christiansen, E.L. & Ryan, S.J. (2015), “Analytic Ballistic Performance Model of Whipple Shields”, Procedia Engineering 103, pp. 389 – 397.
Professor William Schonberg hails from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in the United States. Since the 1980s, he has been researching topics in shock physics, spacecraft protection, hypervelocity impact, and penetration mechanics. His results have been applied to protecting spacecraft in low earth orbit, designing lunar habitats, and other fields.
Bill has worked with: NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Centre and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the US Air Force at Wright Laboratories; and, as a Humboldt Research Award recipient, at the Fraunhofer Ernst Mach Institute, in Freiburg, Germany.
He has received a long list of awards over his career, including the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Hypervelocity Impact Society in 2015. Bill is currently visiting Australia as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair and Visiting Professor at RMIT.
- Bill’s university webpage: https://people.mst.edu/faculty/wschon/
- Bill’s review paper on the state of the research on spacecraft protection from debris and particles: Schonberg, William P. (2017), “Studies of hypervelocity impact phenomena as applied to the protection of spacecraft operating in the MMOD environment”, Procedia Engineering 204, pp. 4–42.
Shannon and Sevvandi’s papers:
- S. Ryan, S.K. & K. Smith-Miles (2015), “Support Vector Machines for Characterising Whipple Shield Performance”, Procedia Engineering, 103, p.522 — 529.
- S. Ryan, S. Thaler & S.K. (2016), “Machine learning methods for predicting the outcome of hypervelocity impact events”, Expert SystemsWith Applications, 45, p. 23 –29.
Fred Whipple’s original paper where he suggests the design of the shield:
A NASA Technical Report analysing the recorded impacts on the space shuttles’ windscreens:
An article on Discover Magazine’s blog has a great video of a Whipple shield impact.
Information about the number of satellites in orbit.
A description from NASA about the scale of the problem posed by space junk.
A statistical analysis of the likelihood of asteroid impacts destroying a ship.
