New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Science News
from research organizations

Space Shuttle Brings New Experiments To Space Station

Date:
March 15, 2008
Source:
University of Notre Dame
Summary:
The space shuttle is carrying with it an experiment designed to isolate how each component of the low-earth orbit environment contributes to the overall degradation each material specimen. The results will help guide the development of next-generation satellite materials that will be durable in space.
Share:
FULL STORY

The space shuttle Endeavour is carrying with it a set of experiments designed and constructed in the laboratory of Dennis Jacobs, a University of Notre Dame professor of chemistry and biochemistry who also serves as a vice president and associate provost.

The experiments are part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE), a multi-institutional collaboration to explore how materials degrade in the low-earth orbit spacecraft environment.

The 16-day mission will be NASA's longest space station trip and will include five space walks by the crew of seven, the most ever while a shuttle is docked to a station. The Notre Dame experiments occupy a prized spot, alongside the installation of a Japanese research module and the delivery of a two-armed Canadian robot to the orbiting International Space Station.

Appropriately for a research effort from the home of the Fighting Irish, astronauts will perform a space walk on St. Patrick's Day (March 17) to install the MISSE-6 experiment outside the space station, where it will fly for approximately one year. Every 20 minutes during the next year, the experiment will gather important data on a variety of materials involved in the experiment.

On a later shuttle mission, a different team of astronauts will retrieve the MISSE-6 experiment and bring it back to earth for further analysis. Jacobs and other researchers will then be able to examine closely the kind of degradation that transpired in space.

"Contrary to popular belief, the low-earth orbit spacecraft environment is a hostile one where energetic atoms, ions, electrons, and radiation bombard the surfaces of a satellite," Jacobs said. "Over time, these corrosive components will degrade and erode most materials.

"We have devised a set of knock-out experiments that remove different portions of the flux of energetic particles that irradiate the external surfaces of a spacecraft. This will allow us to isolate how each component of the low-earth orbit environment contributes to the overall degradation of each material specimen. By understanding the detailed mechanistic pathway through which a variety of materials are eroded in space, we hope to guide the development of next-generation satellite materials that will be durable in space."

Jacobs' laboratory research involves the study of non-thermal processes at the gas/solid interface. He previously had a one-year experiment conducted on the International Space Station in 2005-06.


Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Notre Dame. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

University of Notre Dame. "Space Shuttle Brings New Experiments To Space Station." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 March 2008. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080314160235.htm>.
University of Notre Dame. (2008, March 15). Space Shuttle Brings New Experiments To Space Station. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 29, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080314160235.htm
University of Notre Dame. "Space Shuttle Brings New Experiments To Space Station." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080314160235.htm (accessed March 29, 2024).

Explore More

from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES