Are satellites and astronauts in space in danger due to Perseid meteor shower? Here's the truth

The scientists, in a new study, tried to understand if meteor showers can pose a threat to spacecraft, satellites or astronauts on theInternational Space Station(ISS).

The study has been carried out at a time when the skies will witness multiple meteor showers and allow people to watch meteoroids, which are grains of cosmic dust that comets leave. People will also be watching the meteoroids turn into brilliant "shooting stars" as they enterthe atmosphere of Earth.

One of the biggest meteor showers that will light the skies is the Perseid meteor showerwhich is expected to peak around August 11-12.

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Head ofNASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama Bill Cooke said that the meteor showers don't pose any threat in most cases.

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"If you are inside the ISS, meteoroids pose zero risk," said Cooke, while speaking to Space.com.

Here's how the International Space Station remains protected from meteoroids

According to the scientists, the astronauts remain protected from meteoroids because of a "Whipple bumper" which is present in the International Space Station (ISS).

The Whipple bumper has been named after its inventor Fred Whipple who created the "dirty snowball" model which describes how the comets are made up and the shield has sheets of metal with Kevlar placed between them.

The meteoroids are not deflected but broken up by the shield and their energy is dispersed into the shield.

"The odds of a meteoroid penetrating the space station are vanishingly small — you can think of the space station as the tank oflow Earth orbit," said Cooke.

"If you were an astronaut on EVA [extravehicular activity, i.e., aspacewalk] and you went outside the space station, you would see all these little pips and dents in the hull," he added.

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The scientists said that nearly half of those dents happen because of meteoroid strikes.

The ISS remains at an altitude of between 230 and 285 miles (370 to 460 kilometres) and space junk is the reason behind half of the impacts and at times, the ISS has to maneuverto avoid space junk.

Hence, meteor showers hardly pose any danger to the ISS, as per Cooke. "Only during a meteor storm or outburst are the meteor rates significantly elevated," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)