Deadly Space Dust

Have you ever imagined a speck of dust that can destroy a spacecraft? It might be hard to imagine, but it isn’t when the speck of dust is moving at the speed of 70 km a second.
Speck of dust might not be as harmful as some people think, but if the speck is accelerating in space at 70 km a second, it can be detrimental to things in its way such as satellites that have unprotected integral electronic components. There is a hypothesis that is being tested by Sigrid Close of Stanford University, which was developed by her in 2010 when shooting small particles at numerous types of spacecraft materials that were inside a vacuum chamber. The experiment showed that the small particles were moving fast enough to can create a shockwave that can vaporize some parts of the spacecraft’s exterior.
The collision with the particle and the probe exterior creates plasma, a gas that has so much energy, rendering atoms part with electrons and become ions. The plasma will expand to other places from the original starting point. The expanding plasma can affect other parts of the spacecraft, making it nonfunctional. The expanding plasma can also be compared to an atomic bomb because an atomic bomb creates a plasma that expands from the origin like the tiny accelerated particles. The nuclear bomb might affect things in many kilometers of range, but the particle will only go for a few centimeters. Nevertheless, the tiny particle can do a lot of damage to spacecrafts or satellites. The reasons of why and how are still being researched and tested.
In the paper published recently in the Physics of Plasmas Dr. Close and her collaborator Alex Fletcher of Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT), used a modeling called the Particle In Cell Simulation to work out the details of the collision. Through the modelling Dr. Close said that she and her colleagues were conducting tests and seeing if they were correct and are improving designs of spacecraft. It is true, however, that having more protection and shielding more vulnerable parts are needed, but instead of using more money and adding more weight for shielding it would be more wise to add a light shield that is made out of material that can easily resist accelerating particles and plasma.
In conclusion, even a miniscule thing can jeopardize a big thing, and all spacecraft and satellites should have a more efficient and inexpensive, light-weight protection. Therefore, with the protection, we can use the satellites longer without replacing them frequently.