• Question: What is it like designing and testing materials for spacecrafts

    Asked by Cyclist2007 to Stephen, Sita, Rory, Hannah, Brian, Alison on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Alison Dufresne

      Alison Dufresne answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      It’s incredibly awesome, and complicated. We spent two months last year testing two materials that we’re fine separately, but once they touched one started to glow and the other would swell up. We spent a lot of time investigating what was happening. To be honest, we still don’t fully understand the interaction but we fixed the problem!

    • Photo: Sita Karki

      Sita Karki answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I have not done that job yet. I only work with the data collected from the space.

    • Photo: Brian OConnor

      Brian OConnor answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I don’t know but its an important job for an engineer!

    • Photo: Hannah Currivan

      Hannah Currivan answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I have not designed materials for a spacecraft yet!!!! 🙂 But I have tested materials 🙂
      The material I tested was for thermal control which was researched and developed by ENBIO (http://enbio.eu/) which is part of Ireland’s Space Industry. The materials names are called “Solarblack” and “Solarwhite”, both of which will be on the European Space Agency mission called “Solar Orbiter” (http://sci.esa.int/solar-orbiter/). “Solarblack” is a black material which will attract heat to keep materials warm and Solarwhite will reflect heat to keep materials cold. 🙂 🙂 🙂
      I tested these materials in my master degree lab, where we dismantled a EduCube which is a CubeSat (http://www.cubesat.org/), where we then carried out experiments on the thermal control on board which was ENBIO “Solarblack” and “Solarwhite”. The results from our experiment was that they both performed amazingly. 🙂 🙂 🙂

    • Photo: Rory Scarrott

      Rory Scarrott answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      I’ve not designed or tested any spacecraft materials.
      I’m more the person who would be asking the designers for a spacecraft that allows me to do x, y and z.
      That’s the really cool thing about the folks who build this stuff, they start planning these space missions and craft years in advance, asking everyone what they need and try to build a new, amazing thingy to do it.

    • Photo: Stephen O'Connor

      Stephen O'Connor answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I have not designed any materials, but I have tested them and designed machine parts to help do it. I work in the Materials and Electrical Components laboratory at the European Space Agency. We have facilities here that can recreate the environmental conditions that exist in space. I place materials inside a large chamber and expose them to space-like conditions for days, and sometimes even months. The fun part comes when I get to analyse the materials using different instruments to see how they have reacted to the space-like conditions. For example, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) can zoom in really far so that I can see tiny parts of the materials.
      Check out this video if you would like to see some images made with a SEM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QNe-mt1tzE

      Recently I tested materials on a satellite called BepiColombo. It is travelling to the planet Mercury right now, which is the nearest planet to the Sun, and as a result of this, BepiColombo will get hotter and hotter on its journey. Materials can change shape and other properties when they heat up. Many parts of the satellite are covered in a white paint that reflects sunlight in order to keep the satellite cool so that it stays the same shape and works properly. The results of the tests showed that the paint could be used on the satellite to protect it from the Sun’s intense radiation!
      Check out this video about Bepi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD1cNvOPzAw

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