Abstract
A new European Space Agency (ESA) flight instrument attached to the exterior of the MIR Space Station is providing a better understanding of the effects of the space environment. The instrument was designed to measure, real time, the impacts and trajectory of hypervelocity particles, the atomic oxygen flux and contamination deposition/effects during the course of the mission. The ESA mission, EuroMir'95, began in September 1995 and was completed in March 1996. Active data from the momentum detectors have reconfirmed the existence of an orbital debris cloud. The mission also allowed for an EVA which returned passive materials to Earth for subsequent laboratory analyses. The early results of this experiment suggest the existence of one reasonable size cloud of small size debris particles with momenta in the range of 4E-11 kg-m/s to 5E-10 kg-m/s. These data are considered quite germane due to the similarity in orbital altitude and inclination of the Mir and Alpha Space Stations.
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