A variety of common spacecraft thermal control materials were exposed to a laboratory test designed to simulate the effects of the low-Earth-orbital space-radiation environment. The goal of this test program was to garner performance data on the subject materials, which included two thickness types of old and new rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon® tape manufactured more than a decade apart, an embossed version of rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon tape, perforated rear-surface-aluminized Kapton, and a zinc oxide/methyl silicone white paint. In addition to providing high-fidelity data on the end-of-life performance of the materials, the testing revealed that older samples of the rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon tape showed widely disparate responses and greater solar absorptance increases compared to samples of the same, newly manufactured materials. Samples of the new rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon tape and the other tested materials all performed commensurately, ruling out exposure inhomogeneity as the cause of the disparate behavior of the older rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon samples. Two older samples of the rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon tape also showed mottling and discoloration not exhibited by the newer tape materials. Microscopic examination of the rear-surface-silverized fluorinated ethylene propylene Teflon tapes revealed the presence of cracks in their metal coatings, confirming the root cause of the mottling to be adhesive bleeding through the cracks.


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    Title :

    Simulated Low-Earth-Orbital Exposure of Thermal Control Materials



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2016-05-30


    Size :

    15 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English