Design Verification of Whipple Bumper Shields for Protecting Small Spacecraft from Hypervelocity Impacts During Fast Fly-Bys to Dusty Objects

Yano, Hajime, Arai, Kazuyoshi, Ishibashi, Yukihiro, Miyazaki, Yasuyuki, Satoh, Yasutaka, Sano, Ryoya, Ito, Kai, Iwata, Shoya, Wozniakiewicz, Penelope J., Alesbrook, Luke Stephen, and others. (2025) Design Verification of Whipple Bumper Shields for Protecting Small Spacecraft from Hypervelocity Impacts During Fast Fly-Bys to Dusty Objects. In: Proceedings of the 17th Hypervelocity Impact Symposium. Proceedings of the 17th Hypervelocity Impact Symposium . pp. 1-8. ASME, USA ISBN 978-0-7918-8872-8. (doi:10.1115/HVIS2024-098) (KAR id:112607)

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1115/HVIS2024-098

Abstract

JAXA provides a 24U-class daughtership “B1” to ESA’s Comet

Interceptor (CI) mission for fast flyby observation of a long�period comet or an interstellar object. The spacecraft must

survive in the dusty environment with a lightweight impact

bumper shield at an encountering velocity of up to 70 km/s,

which is too fast to be reproduced by ground experimental

facilities. We designed a three-layered Whipple bumper with

hydrocode simulations that were confirmed to reproduce the

successful survival of Giotto’s bumper shield for the Comet

Halley flyby in 1986. The ballistic limit curve (BLC)

calculations showed that the impact damage could be stopped on

the second layer at the maximum mass and velocity for the

mission with a maximum mass of 34 mg and maximum velocity

of 70 km/s, based on the EDCM 4.1 dust model. Our hydrocode

calculations were consistent with the protection performance of

real-scale impact experiments at 1.0-6.5 km/s by employing

Japanese AFRP as intermediate layers. This result will open a

new era for fast flyby exploration of small spacecraft to dusty

objects. This is a summary of the refereed paper of the same title

in preparation for submission

Item Type:	Conference or workshop item (Paper)
DOI/Identification number:	10.1115/HVIS2024-098
Uncontrolled keywords:	Comet Interceptor, Whipple bumper shield, Hypervelocity impacts, Hydrocodes, Ballistic limit curves, AFRP
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy > QB651 Planets, Minor
Institutional Unit:	Schools > School of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics Schools > School of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics > Physics and Astronomy
Former Institutional Unit:	There are no former institutional units.
Funders:	University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User:	Mark Burchell
Date Deposited:	07 Jan 2026 12:30 UTC
Last Modified:	07 Jan 2026 12:30 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/112607 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Wozniakiewicz, Penelope J..

Creator's ORCID:	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1441-4883
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Alesbrook, Luke Stephen.

Creator's ORCID:	https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9892-281X
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

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