Previous Leonid storms were recorded in 1901 and 1966, when the Earth was close to the parent comet, Tempel-Tuttle. In the 1998-2000 passages the comet was two to three times further away from earth than in 1966. Just prior to the 1998 passage, this estimate was reduced to 6000-10,000 per hour. However, the actual rates encountered were much, much lower, only 100-140 per hour. The Leonids are at the upper end of this range.
Meteoroids range widely in size and mass, in roughly inverse proportion to their abundance.
Conservatively assuming an average lifetime of 8 years per satellite, these satellites accumulated around 3,200 years of in-orbit operation. Over this period, there have been only two failures for which meteoroid impact was identified as the most probable cause. Satellite designs typically allow for a minimum of fifteen years of background and shower meteoroid activity. The risk of a catastrophic meteoroid impact is many times less than the likelihood of random equipment failure. The probability of meteoroid impact on a satellite is a function of the satellite's exposed cross-sectional area, the exposure time, and the meteoroid stream intensity.