The Whipple shield or Whipple bumper is a type of spaced armor shielding, invented by Fred Whipple, designed to protect crewed and uncrewed spacecraft from hypervelocity collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital debris. Relative velocities of objects in earth orbit can range as high as 18 kilometers per second (11.2 miles per second), meaning even very small objects can damage spacecraft. According to NASA, the Whipple shield is designed to withstand collisions with debris up to 1 cm.
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Whipple shield in the context of Fred Whipple
Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Among his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the "dirty snowball" hypothesis of comets, and the invention of the Whipple shield.
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