Marietta-made "space armor" protects rockets in orbit

All right, let's move on to a story right now. I'm really excited about this. Technology made right here in Marietta is now in orbit. Atomic Six's space armor tiles launched for the first time last week, designed to help protect spacecraft from flying debris. This is fascinating. Let's get out right now to Chris Rosenthal, who is live in Marietta with more on this. So, Chris, tell me where you are and what's going on back there. Yeah, I'm in Marietta at Atomic Six's facilities here. been around here since uh 2018 and yeah like you said those uh space armor tiles uh now in space uh you know with thousands of satellites out in space orbiting debris is a really really big problem and uh i got trevor here he is the founder and ceo of uh of atomic six and tell me i mean what is the problem that debris uh poses for uh for uh satellites up in space sure you you actually could have a speck of paint take out a billion dollar satellite because things in space move so fast around 17 000 miles an hour is orbital velocity for low earth orbit which is where our mission is flying right now yeah and so talk to me about what this is here what is space armor what does this do here yeah so we uh this is my favorite one it says built in the atl right but It's a new type of debris shielding. It's the thinnest and lightest debris shielding for space debris. And our first mission took off on SpaceX Bandwagon 5 out of Cape Canaveral last week, October 20th. Wow. Is it pretty cool to think that stuff that you make here is up in space already? It is super cool to think that, yes. So much so my kids' school teachers didn't believe it when we told them they were missing school for the launch. This is kind of the testing. And this kind of shows what the debris can do, huh? Yeah, so this is a block of aluminum. And so this is what happens when about a BB, a size BB projectile hits it. And then this is the first tile that went through full flight qualification. You can see two impacts here. But this went through full vibration, thermal vacuum testing, all the things we need to do in order to qualify it for spaceflight. And that's, I mean, it's kind of like a bulletproof vest for a satellite, huh? Pretty much. Yes, and that's amazing. And so you're on one satellite now, but probably more to come, huh? Plenty more to come. That's right. Plenty more to come. So future right here, Atomic Six Space Armor. And, you know, when you pick this up, I'm telling you, this is so light. This is about maybe about the weight of a cell phone. About your cell phone, exactly. Yeah, and weight really matters up there. Weight really matters up in space, not just for launch costs, but operationally. You want to be lightweight so you can move around. Gotcha, gotcha. So, yeah, absolutely. This is all right here in Marietta. This took off on the Falcon 9 rocket last week for the portal. Portal Space Systems is a customer, and this also is the first radome ever to fly in space to allow RF frequency transmission through shielding while stopping debris from impacting the communication systems. Wow. Well, lots of firsts here. All here, all home in Marietta. Back to you, Paul. Really cool story, Chris. I can't wait to see more. And just that idea of a speck of paint being able to take out a satellite is wild. So thank you very much. We'll see you back here a little bit later on this afternoon.