The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks in August of each year, was twice as active in 2016 compared to other years. The Perseids are always a major shower and move at very high speeds, so monitoring is essential for the safety of NASA’s spacecraft as there is great potential for high-energy impacts. Increases in activity, like that seen this year, add additional mission risks.

The July 2016 edition of Orbital Debris Quarterly News included an article on Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris impacts on an International Space Station cover. Continue reading for the full article. 

NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office is acquiring a Titan Transtage from the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group , commonly known as “The Boneyard,” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, to conduct spectrographic inspections to better understand these historic spacecraft.

The issue of Orbital Debris Quarterly News covering January through April 2016 is now available. 

Not much is known about the Kappa Cygnid meteor shower, and NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office (MEO) is working to rectify that.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office recently released two Technical Manuals (TMs): NASA Meteoroid Engineering Model Release 2.0 (TM-2015-218214) and Lunar Impact Flash Locations (TM-2015-218213).

The October 2015 issue of Orbital Debris Quarterly News is now available and features the article "Two More Collision Avoidance Maneuvers for the International Space Station." Continue reading for the full article.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, with the support of NASA’s Meteoroids Environments Office, conducted a dust study as a part of NASA’s Solar Probe Plus mission to explore the sun’s outer atmosphere. 

See the July issue of Orbital Debris Quarterly News.