The joint ESA and JAXA mission BepiColombo is the first European mission to Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system. The extreme environment requires thermal protection to maintain full functional performance of the spacecraft. Thermal coatings are the best lightweight and least complex solution for thermal control, however available commercial coatings have shown to not withstand the harsh environment. Therefore development activities for a new coating were initiated. The qualification campaign for the paint shows excellent properties like easy to apply, very good adherence to the substrate, high flexibility (also thin foils can be painted and crushed without flaking), high resistance to thermal shocks and high resistance to any kind of radiation (VUV, UV, e, p). Also the RF/PIM tests showed only a minor damping effect of <0.02 dB. Electro-static discharge tests were not conclusive thus for arcing risk mitigation the application of a "grid" for physical separation of large surfaces has been implemented. Only the thermal endurance test shows a darkening of the paint and the reason is not finally understood. The discoloration areas were examined and amorphous carbon was found. The paint itself does not contain any organics after sintering process so the assumption is that the darkening is probably caused by external organic contaminants. The inner surface of the paint is in the range of ca. 5 qm/g and exhibits very high porosity of ca. 0.35 cm3/g making the surface more sensitive to contamination as compared to dense surfaces. A possible solution could be a cleaning process to be developed to clean the surface just before launch. Completion of the qualification campaign is expected within 2013 for launch in 2015.


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    Title :

    Development of a thermal white coating for high temperature and irradiance space environment


    Additional title:

    Entwicklung eines weißen Wärmeschutzanstriches für hohe Temperaturen und Raumstrahlung


    Contributors:
    Fugger, S. (author) / Downar, H. (author) / Sperlich, E. (author) / Meyer, F. (author) / Faber, S. (author)


    Publication date :

    2012


    Size :

    3 Seiten, 5 Bilder, 1 Tabelle




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Storage medium


    Language :

    English