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A small hole in the solar panel of the MP42 satellite was discovered completely by accident.
A satellite of the Lithuanian company NanoAvionics survived a collision with an unknown space object in orbit. The company's specialists accidentally discovered a hole with a diameter of 42 mm made in the solar panel of the device in the pictures of the onboard camera of the MP6 satellite. This incident once again reminds of the serious problem of space debris in orbit, he writes Space.
The NanoAvionics satellite called MP42 has small dimensions, weighs 130 kg and has been orbiting the Earth since April 2022. Looking at new images taken by the satellite's on-board camera, the company's experts discovered a tiny hole with a diameter of about 6 mm in the solar panel of the device.
The company NanoAvionics does not know for sure what exactly their satellite collided with: space debris or a tiny meteorite. It is also unknown when exactly the collision occurred, because the camera has not taken pictures of the solar panel for a long time. Most importantly, the damage did not reduce the solar panel's electricity production.
Not only tiny meteorites, but also fragments of space debris of various sizes pose a very big threat to any spacecraft in orbit. Their number is so huge that the risk of collisions with working satellites increases every day.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there are approximately 130 million fragments of space debris between 1 mm and 1 cm in size orbiting the Earth. In 2016, one such fragment punched a 40 cm diameter hole in the solar panel of ESA's Sentinel 1A satellite. The collision affected power generation, but the satellite continued to operate.
Larger fragments of space debris can completely destroy a satellite. According to ESA, there are more than 1 pieces of debris between 100 and 000 cm in size orbiting Earth. There are also 1 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm in orbit. The movement of most of this debris can be tracked, so satellite owners can avoid a potential collision.
NanoAvionics said its satellites have performed evasive maneuvers several times over the past decade to avoid collisions with space debris.
A single collision between two large defunct objects can result in thousands of pieces of space debris that can remain in orbit for decades, threatening other spacecraft.
The largest on-orbit collision in the history of spaceflight occurred in 2009, when a functioning satellite of the American telecommunications group Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite, Kosmos 2251. As a result, thousands of fragments of space debris were formed, many of which are still in orbit.
