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Experiment Title: Exposure of Spacecraft Coatings

Original Principal Investigator(s): Slemp, Mr. Wayne - Invest. Role: Original, Slemp, Mr. Wayne - Invest. Role: Present, Slemp, Mr. Wayne - Invest. Role: Original, Slemp, Mr. Wayne - Invest. Role: Present,

The degradation of thermal control coatings due to space radiation exposure has caused spacecraft to overheat, leading to problems with subsystems and mission lifetimes. To prevent such problems, designers need to be able to accurately predict the performance of thermal control coatings. Several flight experiments have been conducted to obtain the necessary coating performance data. Unfortunately, these data were limited to telemetry information and the experiments were not returned for postflight evaluation. Coating performance was determined from temperature measurements made on sample coatings and increases in sample temperature were interpreted as being caused by space radiation. With these experiments it was not possible to distinguish between damage caused by space radiation and that caused by some other means, such as mechanical stress or contamination. To properly isolate the cause of coating degradation, an experiment was necessary which provided for the return of coating sample after space exposure for ground laboratory evaluation. The NASA Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) provided a unique flight opportunity for conducting experiments in space and returning these experiments to Earth for laboratory evaluation. Experiment S0010, Exposure of Spacecraft Coatings, consisted of selected spacecraft thermal control coatings to be exposed to the low Earth orbit (LEO) environment on LDEF.

Photograph Classification: Postflight

Associated Photograph(s):
LaRC - L91-02536
KSC - KSC-390C-1913.09
JSC - None
LaRC - L84-07027
KSC - KSC-384C-59.01
JSC - None
LaRC - L90-10374
KSC - None
JSC - S32-76-001

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