Experimental Study on Laser-driven Miniflyer for Description of Space Debris with High-speed

Abstract

Increasing numbers of space debris around the earth now pose a major threat to satellites as their impact velocity may reach up to several km/s. We use a pulse laser to accelerate a miniflyer for mimicking the space debris. The multi-layer coat on the confined medium is known to promote a higher acceleration. However, it requires some special techniques which take somewhat long time and cost to coat. Instead, we devised a simple concept to coat by the black lacquer paint on a flyer. It shows improvement in the flyer velocity by 1.5-2 times the uncoated, and the resulting velocity reached 1.42km/s with Nd:YAG laser energy under 1.4 joules. The resulting velocity is suitable for satellite vulnerability test for debris impact in the geostationary orbit.