Word: riegler
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...that velocity, says Guenter Riegler, a NASA senior scientist, a meteoroid as small as a dust particle could blast a hole nearly half an inch across in a solar panel or a layer of insulation. Equally threatening is the intense heat of impact, which would instantly vaporize the meteoroid and convert it to an ionized gas, or plasma, that would shock the spacecraft with an electrostatic charge. "If that charge got into some of your data circuitry," Riegler says, "it could wipe out data...
NASA is taking no chances. It will power down any threatened spacecraft to avoid short circuits and will temporarily orient each one, says Riegler, "so that its strongest side faces the incoming Leonids." Even the Hubble Space Telescope will turn its back to the meteoroids, to shield the aperture through which it scans the heavens. And the flat solar panels that energize most of the satellites will be turned edge on to the Leonid stream to minimize the possibility of impact...