Abstract: In order to study the transmission characteristics of acoustic emission signal caused by hypervelocity impact on manned spacecraft with stiffened panel, the hypervelocity impact is simulated on both flat panels and stiffened panels, and the acoustic emission signals are collected by sensor array. The effects of the strengthening ribs of the panel on the AE signals are analyzed in the aspects of wave mode, frequency domain and time domain by methods of wavelet and Fourier transform. The transmission characteristics of acoustic emission signals corresponding to distinct damage patterns of pits and perforations are studied. The results illustrate that the high frequency components of AE signal in stiffened panel have less energy than that in flat panel, which implies that stiffened panel has filtering effect on high frequency components of the emission signal. The energy of SO mode will increase when the damage patterns are perforations which resulted from hypervelocity impact. The research findings provide a favorable reference to the detection and localization technique for hypervelocity impact on manned spacecraft with stiffened panel.