Meteor showers provide ground-based observers with a chance to observe the sky as meteoroids (cozmic dust particles left behind by comets) burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, creating bright “shooting stars.”

The next major meteor shower to grace our skies is the Perseid meteor shower, expected to peak around August 11-12. So if a meteor shower hits Earth, would it pose any threat to satellites, spacecraft, or astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS)?

Astronauts are protected from meteors because the ISS is equipped with a “Whipple bumper”. Named after inventor Fred Whipple, who developed the “dirty snow” model that explains the structure of comets, this shield consists of metal sheets with Kevlar between them. The shield does not deflect meteors, but breaks them up and disperses their energy across the shield.

“The probability of a meteorite hitting the space station is so small that you can think of it as a tank in low Earth orbit,” Cook says. “If you were an astronaut during an EVA, [позакорабельної активності, тобто виходу у відкритий космос] “And when you go outside the space station, you see all these little dents and dents in the hull.”

But only half of these crashes are caused by meteorite impacts. At an altitude of 230 to 285 miles (370 to 460 kilometers) above the ISS, half of the impacts are caused by space debris, and the ISS occasionally has to maneuver to avoid space debris.

In fact, Cook says meteor showers don’t pose any problems for the ISS. Statistically, it’s the occasional background of meteoroids (bits of space dust that are always there, not associated with any kind of rain) that constitute 90% to 95% of the danger, especially for astronauts who go into space without bumper protection. That’s why Cook’s office issues a meteor forecast before every spacewalk to make sure the risk of accidents won’t increase.

The Geminids, the strongest annual meteor shower that peaks in December, are only about 60% of the occasional background risk, Cook said. “Only during a meteor shower or flare do the number of meteors increase significantly,” he said.

A meteor shower is a concentrated meteor shower in which more than a thousand meteors can be seen in the sky per hour. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through a dust trail left by a comet. The Earth encounters these different trails at the same points in its orbit each year, so each meteor shower occurs at the same time each year. However, a meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through a denser dust trail than normal.

Only some meteor showers produce storms. The Leonids, which peak in November, occur several years in a row, 33 years apart. The last Leonid storms were between 1998 and 2001, so the next storms are scheduled for the early 2030s, when the Earth will collide with a particularly dense dust plume from Comet Tempel-Tuttle.

The storms of the Draconida meteor shower, which peaks in October, are less predictable. Normally, the Draconids are a rather bleak sight, consisting mostly of faint, slow-moving meteors, but during the Draconid meteor shower of 1933, meteors hit at a rate of 6,000 meteors per hour. The last meteor shower in 2018 produced a shower of 150 meteors per hour.

There’s also the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks in August and can flare randomly for several hours; the last such spike occurred in 2021.

Storms and pandemics are an “emergency response,” Cook said. While the space station’s buffer shield still protects astronauts inside, spacewalks are being delayed and other satellites and spacecraft need to take precautions. The Hubble Space Telescope, for example, is reorienting itself so that it’s not facing the meteor shower’s beam (the direction the meteors are coming from). Cook likened it to “a nuclear strike position with your back to the beam.”

The risk to each satellite is minimal because each has a small cross-section—a few tens of square meters. By comparison, the ISS’s solar panels alone cover 114,000 square feet (10,600 square meters), and even that pales in comparison to the vast expanse of the night sky.

“When I lie on my back at night and look up at the sky, I see an area of ​​about 30,000 square kilometers. [12 000 квадратних миль] That’s the atmosphere in which meteors burn up, Cook says. “Now compare that to tens of square meters. So the probability of a meteor hitting a satellite is small.”

But the risk is not zero. In rare cases, satellites have been hit, but the only satellite permanently destroyed by a meteor shower was the Olympus communications satellite during the 1993 Perseid explosion. Several other satellites have recorded anomalies caused by minor impacts, and one or two have even been knocked over on their sides by the impact of a meteor.

“For example, a few years ago a NOAA satellite was hit by an asteroid and it shook a little bit; Cook was tilted forward so that its camera was no longer facing Earth, and we had to reposition it,” he said.

Meteor shower monitoring by the Meteorological Environment Office is based on ground-based observations of meteors, counting their numbers and alerting scientists to any spontaneous explosions that could affect satellites or humans in space. Meteor observations can be made using professional radars, such as the Canadian Meteor Orbiting Radar and the Southern Argentina Maneuverable Meteor Radar, operated by researchers at the University of Western Ontario.

Amateur astronomers can also make observations. For example, the Global Meteor Network consists of over a thousand cameras worldwide, and organizations such as the American Meteor Society, the British Meteor Alliance, the British Astronomical Association, and the International Meteor Organization accept reports from amateur astronomers.

So, the next time you’re counting shooting stars during a meteor shower, write down how many you see, the time and date, their color, brightness, and the direction they’re moving. (A good telescope will help you get a more detailed view.) Then send your report to one of the organizations listed above. Your observations could help protect a satellite or an astronaut in space.

In general, low Earth orbit is fairly safe from meteors.

“The idea of ​​a meteor shower as a swarm of debris tearing satellites apart is completely Hollywood,” Cook says. “That would never happen.”