Infiltration of Supermicron Aerosols into a Simulated Space Telescope

摘要

Purging is a common scheme to protect sensitive surfaces of payloads and spacecraft from airborne contaminant intrusion during ground assembly, integration, and launch vehicle encapsulation. However, the purge for space volumes must be occasionally interrupted. Thus, it is important to gain insights into the transport of ambient particles penetrating through vent holes and entering the interior of a confined space system, such as a space telescope, during a purge outage. This study presents experimental work performed to measure time-dependent aerosol concentration changes during a purge outage. The laboratory results from the aerosol experiments were compared with a mass balance-based mechanistic model that had been experimentally validated for aerosols ranging from 0.5 to 2 u.m. The experimental data show that the steady- state aerosol concentration inside a simulated space telescope (SST) is governed by the surrounding particle concentration. SST air exchange rate, and the particle deposition rate.