Preliminary study of radio frequency waves in hypervelocity impact plasma

Abstract

Orbital debris and meteoroids can cause mechanical and electrical anomalies by impacting spacecraft. Although mechanical damage tends to occur only from particles with masses >10−3g, electrical damage can be a result of hypervelocity (> 10 km/s) impacts (HVI) even with smaller particles. In HVI, the projectile speed exceeds the speed of sound in the material and has enough energy to create plasma by ionizing the material near the surface, which can then emit radio frequency (RF) waves.In this paper, we conduct a preliminary study on the characteristics of impact-generated RF emission with the ultimate goal of building an RF predictive model for risk assessment of HVI electrical effects that can damage spacecraft. First, we introduce wavelet analysis as a method for denoising and quantifying the total RF signal energy. An appropriate mother wavelet and the number of decomposition levels are selected using a synthetic signal. Second, the total energy of the RF emission is calculated using Parseval's theorem. Results suggest that the total RF signal energy is proportional to the energy flux of the impactor. Finally, spectrograms of the RF emission are analyzed to characterize features that can be used in the future to predict impacts that can cause electrical damage to satellites.