The structural integrity of the thermal protection system (TPS) of a space vehicle that re-enters the earth's atmosphere is critical to the vehicle's survival. However, these materials are subject to damage from impacts by fast particles that may be naturally-occurring micrometeoroids or artificial space debris. It is therefore desirable to develop a monitoring system to detect impacts on the TPS, and to evaluate any resulting damage. This paper reports progress towards the development of such a system, which employs piezoelectric acoustic emission sensors to detect the occurrence and approximate location of impacts, and arrays of thermal sensors to evaluate the severity of the damage in terms of its effect on the thermal transmissivity of the TPS material. The paper also reports a novel self-organising approach to the development of a highly robust optical fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor network that is used for the thermal sensing.
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