NASA's Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) 3 and its ability to replicate spacecraft impact rates

Abstract

Meteoroids pose one of the largest risks to spacecraft outside of low Earth orbit. In order to correctly predict the rate at which meteoroids impact and damage spacecraft, environment models must describe the mass, directionality, velocity, and density distributions of meteoroids. NASA's Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) is one such model; MEM 3 is an updated version of the code that better captures the correlation between directionality and velocity and incorporates a bulk density distribution. This paper describes MEM 3 and compares its predictions with the rate of large particle impacts seen on the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and the Pegasus II and III satellites.