Aerospace engineers have to consider numerous factors when designing a spacecraft, but one that comes up more and more often is the need to design against Micro-Meteoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD). While most designers understand the threat, designing structural solutions capable of withstanding the hypervelocity impacts these undercontrolled pieces of material can cause can take a significant bite out of a mission’s mass budget. A new paper from Binkal Kumar Sharma of the University of Bremen and Harshitha Baskar, an independent researcher, provides a detailed review of cutting-edge options for defending against those deadly particles. To be clear, there are actually two distinct threats designers must look out for. One is from micrometeoroids - small rocks from space that have broken off a comet or asteroid and are the dominant threat at orbits lower than 270km and above 4800km. In between those two altitudes, human-derived space debris is the major threat to the structural integrity of a spacecraft.…