POSTFLIGHT ANALYSIS OF THE EXPOSED MATERIALS ON EFFU

摘要

The Exposed Facility Flyer Unit (EFFU) is an on-board experiment system mounted on the Space Flyer Unit (SFU) which is a platform-type spacecraft and the first retrievable carrier in Japan. It flew for about 10 months in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). As one of the on-orbit EFFU experiments, a materials exposure experiment was conducted to evaluate the degradation of material samples in the LEO environment which included atomic oxygen (AO), ultraviolet rays (UV) and cosmic rays. Samples were mounted on two locations of the EFFU: on the solar directed surface and on the side surface perpendicular to the former one. The samples were examined before launch and after SFU was retrieved to evaluate mass change, change of solar absorptivity, and surface morphology or chemical state change. This paper presents major results obtained from the EFFU materials exposure experiments.