Construction of mass, three-dimensional and velocity distribution for the second debris clouds

Space debris in orbit is a very important problem for space development. A lot of agencies, companies and universities study space debris and develop the shields for space debris impacts. But those shields are not strong enough for space debris more than 1 cm in diameter. The production mechanism of second debris clouds generated after the first bumper shield impact has not been clarified in details so far. To develop the more light and effective shield for impacts of space debris, controlling the second debris cloud distribution is required. A purpose of this study is to construct mass distributions, three-dimensional distributions and velocity distributions of fragments of second debris clouds with wide impact velocity range and to obtain the correlation data between impact velocity, and mass and velocity distribution of fragments. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.