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.
Simulated Low-Earth-Orbital Exposure of Thermal Control Materials
Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets ; 53 , 6 ; 1085-1099
2016-05-30
15 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Simulated Low-Earth-Orbital Exposure of Thermal Control Materials
Online Contents | 2016
|Simulated Low-Earth-Orbital Exposure of Thermal Control Materials
Online Contents | 2016
|