Materials Testing Activities within ESA in Support of Future Inner Solar System Missions

摘要

In this paper the ESA iiilernal approach regarding the assessment of materials for inner solar system missions is presented. A main part of the work is devoted to the assessment of thermal control materials and space environmental testing at elevated temperature. As these materials are the most exposed it is important to understand how they will interact with the relevant space environment at elevated temperature. Driving parameters for materials degradation are discussed and on-going testing efforts are described. An important input parameter for thermal models is the knowledge of the end of life values for the thermo-optical properties as these determine the equilibrium temperatures. In certain cases end of life testing needs to be done when the uncertainty of extrapolation is too high.