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Comment by theothermkn | Hacker News Reader

At the typical velocities for this kind of impact, probably not. At these speeds, computer analyses ignore the solid properties of the colliding objects, modeling them as liquids, instead. (The shear resistances is just not relevant, and everything liquefies from the heat from the impact. Even that heat loss is negligible in terms of the total energy of the collision.)

Most likely, there would be fragments of the impactor and the hull, mixed together with each other and oxidized with the station air, floating about. I won't risk speculating about the fragment size, other than to say it would be pretty dang small. (I'm leaning toward "powder," but personally wouldn't rule out either "grit" or whatever "finer than powder" is.)

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>or whatever "finer than powder"

silt.

if its even smaller its clay.

So the astronauts have breathed the meteor into their lungs? Funky ...

They're breathing far more dead skin. So are you, though.

Yes, but that's organic and pretty normal. Aren't meteors and say moon dust dangerous because its very sharp and jagged?

Once it’s flashed to a plasma and turned into sub-micron dust? Probably not. The danger if there is any would be if the remaining particulates (assuming it wasn’t mostly reduced to heat, light and some basic elements) are friable.

I would expect much more stuff to be in the air under zero gravity. On earth dust will settle on the ground but I assume in the ISS it will keep floating around.

This is mostly a myth:

https://www.livescience.com/32337-is-house-dust-mostly-dead-...

If it were a hole, as in something punching through. These are cracks. Probably nothing passed through, these opened up beside the impact point as material buckled.

What's the possibility a meteor could hit an astronaut? I imagine that wouldn't be good.

Depends on the size of the meteor. It's very likely survivable; micrometeroid protection is a design feature of the suits, which have plenty of layers, and a small hole won't cause rapid decompression. For a through-suit puncture it's going to be a lot like a gunshot wound.

If you're hit by a speck of dust or a grain of sand you're probably good for most impact sites. If you're hit by a marble you're going to be in real trouble (same is true of the ISS itself in this case).

In any case, it's pretty unlikely.

I'd imagine they have some pretty heavy duty air filters that could catch and remove that sort of particulate. Total speculation though...

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