  Orbital debris is a constraint on the long-term health of any spacecraft and
must be consi-dered during mission planning. Varying mechanisms have been
proposed to quantify the problem. Accurate in-situ data is essential with
various types of sensors designed to detect orbital debris impacts employed on
space missions since the 1950's [1]. The earliest of these was the PZT
(piezoelectric lead zirconate tita-nate) sensor which was often used in-situ to
measure the momentum of a particle at the time of impact. More recently, PVDF
(Polyvinylidene fluoride) [2] has been employed as it exhibits piezoelectric
capabilities along with the advantages of ruggedness, no bias re-quirement,
ease of large area sensor construction, high counting rate capability, and
space reliability, making it an ideal space debris sensor. Its large sensing
sur-face area and ease of integration into a PZT sensor system makes it a
desirable element in any in-situ space debris sensor.
