Courtesy Lawrence Murr , University of Texas at El Paso. This deeper crater was made by a tungsten carbide pellet moving 2 kilometers per second. A slower, denser pellet caused much deeper penetration than a less dense, but faster, pellet. Courtesy Lawrence Murr , University of Texas at El Paso. Faster than a speeding bullet When it comes to being bombarded by space junk, size matters.
Denser particles are more dangerous.
Velocity also matters, but not in the straight-line way you might think. In other words, faster may be less perilous than slower. But with slower particles, shattering doesn't occur, so the damage becomes much greater. It's really a pretty staggering phenomenon. The Gardol shield Shielding against those dense particles requires lots of mass, Murr says, but launching massive stuff into space is expensive.