Study on the Technology of Laser-Driven Flyer Hypervelocity Launch

Abstract

The outer surfaces functional materials of spacecraft are exposed to hypervelocity impacting of micro meteoroids and orbital debris in space. The laser-driven flyer (LDF) system can launch a speed of 3∼10km/s, a thickness of about 5um aluminum flyer under the experimental conditions. It can well simulate the effects of micrometer space debris impact on the outer surfaces functional materials of spacecraft. In this paper, the laser-driven flyer technique and flyer velocity measurement technique are introduced. The quantitative relationships between the flyer velocity and the laser energy, laser pulse width, and the flyer thickness were analyzed. The damage morphology and performance degradation of outer surfaces functional materials (such as K9 glass and OSR) of spacecraft were experimentally studied under the hypervelocity aluminium flyer impacting.