P4_3 Spaceball

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the amount of energy and force an oncoming piece of debris the size and mass of a baseball would have on the International Space Station (ISS), and the effects of a collision between the two. It was found that the energy of the baseball is 4.4x10^6 J, meaning the force it exerts as it penetrates a window on the ISS is 5.5x10^7 N. This is shown to have the equivalent force to a collision between two cars if their impact velocity is 1303 ms^−1 . We concluded that the ISS collision would cause serious damage to its protective shielding and modules and would be by far the largest collision to date.