More info:
I was reading about meteor showers, and it made me wonder what happens onboard the International Space Station (ISS) during a meteor shower. Are the astronauts in danger?
Luckily, NASA has an organization called the Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) that handles the technical work on meteoroids in space.
Bill Cooke is the lead at the MEO. He says, “Meteors fly by the ISS all the time, but the astronauts don’t see them. The meteor is just a little piece of rock, but it is so dark and moves so fast that you don’t see it whiz by. Astronauts see the meteors when they look down and see them burning up near Earth’s atmosphere, appearing as streaks of light.”
The objective of the MEO is to figure out the risk of meteoroids impacting ISS and other spacecraft in Earth’s orbit.
While it is not clear if meteoroids have ever destroyed a spacecraft, there have been several in-flight anomalies attributed to meteoroid impacts including loss of the Olympus satellite.
Spacecraft designers work to protect critical components on spacecraft or avoid critical operations such as extravehicular activities during meteor showers.
Astronaut Chris Hatfield, a past commander of ISS, once wrote that seeing a meteor from space was a “reminder of living in a shooting gallery.”
The good news is that the chances of the ISS getting hit by a small meteor are low. Plus, the ISS is built tough, and it can withstand many kinds of meteoroid impacts.
