Whipple shield
Escudo Whipple
- Date
- 1947 · confidence low
- Place
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Fred Lawrence Whipple
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A spacecraft protection shield formed by a thin outer sheet spaced away from the hull, designed by Fred Whipple to shatter micrometeoroids and orbital debris before they strike the main structure.
What it led to
- a protection standard on space stations such as the ISS
- the basis for later multi-layer shields (Nextel, Kevlar)
- reduces the risk of puncture from high-velocity space debris