A History of Meteoroid Shielding for the Apollo LunarMission

摘要

A timeline for the design and development of the meteoroid protection for the Apollo command, service and lunar module is constructed. The results of the analyses leading to an estimate of the risk of loss of mission due to meteoroid impact are reported for different dates during the design for the 8.3 day lunar design reference mission HA. These results are modified for the current meteoroid environment model and extended to all nine lunar missions to arrive at an overall system risk for the Apollo lunar program. Component testing is discussed and design solutions for protecting the SPS propellant tanks and the CM and LM windows.