How does space station survive damage caused by debris?

[wllsrvive]

How does the space station, its solar panels and the satellites in space survive the potential damages caused by the different size of debris in space?

 

[Valcan]

How does the space station, its solar panels and the satellites in space survive the potential damages caused by the different size of debris in space?

Depends on the mass and speed to a point nothing up there atm can survive a hit by say another satelite not at the speed objects in orbit travel.

But there are a few ways currently that can help. For small stuff the Material the Bigelow space habs are built out of is a kevlar design about a foot thick its pretty good for stoping small stuff.

Then there is the obvious....dont be in the path of such a object.

 

[bdewoody]

I've often wondered that since almost all satellites are launched west to east aren't they basically traveling in the same direction? I would assume that satellites in polar orbits are assigned to different altitudes as with airliners. I realise that collisions will send debris in all directions but it seems that the prevalent direction would still be from west to east.

 

[MeteorWayne]

So far there has been very little damage, so it's a moot point. That could change any minute now; an object the size of a baseball penetrating the ISS would very likely kill all the occupants quickly. Fortunately, objects that size can be tracked and the ISS could be moved out of the way.