AN EXAMINATION OF HYPERVELOCITY PARTICLE PENETRATION PARAMETERS FOR THIN-FILMS FLOWN IN-SPACE

Many materials and techniques have been developed by the authors to sa mple the flux of particles in Low Earth Orbit(LEO); and through regula r in situ sampling of the flux in LEO, the materials and techniques ha ve produced data which compliment the data now being amassed by Long D uration Exposure Facility (LDEF) research activities. A comparison of the data provided by LDEF studies with data derived from the analysis of other materials which have been exposed to the space environment ha s been ongoing. In order to augment the amount of material returned in a form which can be analyzed on Earth, the survivability of the exper iment as well as the captured particles has been assessed. Using Sandi a National Laboratory's hydrodynamic computer code CTH, hypervelocity impacts on the materials which comprise the experiments have been inve stigated. The progress of these studies will be reported