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Space.com's May 23, 2025 Chinese astronauts add debris shield to Tiangong space station during 8-hour spacewalk (video) says:

This was the 19th time taikonauts aboard Tiangong have conducted an EVA; many of these spacewalks have focused on installing debris shields to the station's exterior. With assistance from the station's robotic arm, Dong and Zhongrui successfully positioned a protective sheet on a designated exterior location on Tiangong. The pair also performed routine station maintenance and equipment inspections.

Question: Is the Tiangong Space Station the first crewed spacecraft to have explicit debris shielding completely separate from its structural elements and its atmosphere-containing skin?

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  • $\begingroup$ We don't have an [in-space-upgrade] or [retrofitting] tag, so I've used [in-space-repair] as the closes fit. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ I don't understand the question, but additional shielding was added to the ISS service module by EVA crewmembers a while back. ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20120002584/downloads/… $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Commented 23 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ @OrganicMarble with that, you have a supported "No" answer. I had thought that ISS and shuttle astronauts were shielded from small bits of debris and meteorites by their "structural elements and skin". If additional material was added whose function was only shielding, that would be exactly what I'm asking about. Let me know if you see any way that I can improve the wording of the question. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented 22 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ OK, will see if I can find some details. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Commented 18 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, most of not all the ROS modules were considered (very) less than ideal when assessed according to the BUMPER code (back in the early-mid 90s), but they couldnt add the shielding before launch so it was always supposed to be added.. later... So predates the PRC by a lot. $\endgroup$
    – blobbymcblobby
    Commented 17 hours ago

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tl;dr Debris protection shielding was installed on the Service Module (SM) of the International Space Station (ISS) (part of the Russian segment) in 2002 and 2007.

It was determined that the SM of the ISS didn't meet debris protection standards due to its legacy design prior to ISS requirements being set. Accordingly additional shielding was shipped up on two shuttle flights and installed by Russian-segment based Extravehicular Activities (EVAs).

enter image description here

  • Six bundles of Service Module Debris Panels (SMDPs) were brought up on STS-111 (June 2002) and installed via EVA in August 2002.

  • The final three bundles of SMDPs were delivered by STS-116 (December 2006) and installed via EVA in June 2007.

A rendering of some of the installed SMDPs made using official NASA tool DOUG. The SMDPs are highlighted in gold color:

enter image description here

References:

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