My intuition has always been that a stone striking a satellite is statistically unlikely because of the vastness of space. The theoretical possibility was alway

My intuition has always been that a stone striking a satellite is statistically unlikely because of the vastness of space. The theoretical possibility was always there to create immense damage (or completely destroy smaller satellites) because of the kinetic energy involved, but so unlikely to be near-zero. That's what caught my eye about this tweet. It's the first time I've heard of an actual collision between a satellite and a small stone. As far as your question regarding the ISS, I can only imagine what would happen if it had struck the hull. A satellite in LEO travels at around 7-8 km/s (kilometers per second). I'm not sure what that means for the relative velocity between the satellite and a stone---probably slower, but by how much? Using the orbital velocity as an estimate of the relative velocity, that's about an order of magnitude faster than most firearms, so I find it improbable that the hull is armoured against such a strike.