Woignier Thierry, Duffours L., Colombel P., Durin C. (2013). Aerogels materials as space debris collectors. Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, 484153 [6 p. en ligne]. ISSN 1687-8434.
Titre du document
Aerogels materials as space debris collectors
Année de publication
2013
Type de document
Article
Auteurs
Woignier Thierry, Duffours L., Colombel P., Durin C.
Source
Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, 2013,
484153 [6 p. en ligne] ISSN 1687-8434
Material degradation due to the specific space environment becomes a key parameter for space missions.The use of large surface of brittlematerials on satellites can produce, if impacted by hypervelocity particles, ejected volumes of mater 100 times higher than the impacting one. The presented work is devoted to the use of silica aerogels as passive detectors. Aerogels have been exposed to the low earth orbit of the ISS for 18months. The study describes the aerogels process and the choice of synthesis parameters in such a way to get expected features in terms of porosity,mechanical properties, internal stresses, and transparency. Low-density aerogels (0.09 g⋅cm−3) have been prepared. The control of transparency necessary to see and identify particles and fragments collected is obtained using a base catalysis during gel synthesis. After return to earth, the aerogels samples have been observed using optical microscopy to detect and quantify craters on the exposed surface. First results obtained on a small part of the aerogels indicate a large number of debris collected in the materials.
