Selfie shows hole

Satellite survives impact of object in space

A selfie has revealed that the MP42 satellite collided with a piece of space debris or a micrometeorite.(Bild: Kongsberg NanoAvionics)

A Lithuanian company that sent a mini-satellite into space in April 2022 recently made a surprising discovery: A selfie taken by a camera on board the MP42 satellite shows a six-millimeter hole.

"As for the cause, of course we can't rule out an alien satellite woodpecker, but our best guess is a piece of space debris or a micrometeorite," wrote Kongsberg NanoAvionics, a spin-off from Vilnius University, a week ago on X (formerly Twitter; see tweet below).

Thanks to a selfie camera on the MP42, it was possible to document the damage to the satellite. If the camera had not photographed the hole, the damage to the solar panel would not have been noticed at all, according to the company.

Hole only discovered by chance
According to the telemetry data from the solar panel, the impact did not affect MP42's power generation. The impact was only noticed thanks to the image taken by the selfie camera on board in October. As the last selfie of MP42 was previously taken in April 2023 - a year and a half ago - it is therefore practically impossible to determine when the impact took place.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there are almost three million kilograms of man-made objects orbiting within 2000 kilometers of Earth, but at any given time there is only 200 kilograms of meteoroid mass in this area.

"Regardless of whether the impact was a micrometeorite or a piece of space debris, the collision underscores the need for responsible space operations in orbit. And it makes us think about the resilience of satellites to such events," NanoAvionics said in the statement.