The Air Force is developing a Space Operations Vehicle (SOV) that will efficiently and cost effectively transport cargo through space.  The vehicle requires a robust thermal protection system (TPS) that will endure extreme temperature and acoustic environments on ascent and reentry of the earth’s atmosphere.  However, the thermal protection capability of the TPS will be jeopardized if it undergoes impacts from ground handling or micrometeoroids.  Therefore, a method for vehicle health monitoring (VHM) is desired to detect such impacts, improve turnaround times on flight takeoffs and increase the overall possibility of condition based maintenance.  In this study, impacts were performed on thermal protection materials at various impact energies.  The impacts were detected using commercial and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensors.  Several configurations were attempted to efficiently characterize the damage induced from a hemispherical impactor. Conventional nondestructive techniques as well as fractographic inspections were also performed to further quantify the amount of damage produced in the materials.