Ricerc@Sapienza

Recently, the focus of Space Research has been set both on scientific and commercial fields. When planning a mission in space, it is necessary take into account the environment in which the instrumentations and the satellite that carries them will go to work. About 25% of operating anomalies are in fact due to the space environment that affects the control and management systems of the spacecraft and of the instrument.

Aim of the work is to describe a novel coating process based on the Al-Oxide ceramic varnish ‘Pyropaint’ applied on a spacecraft Thermal Protection System for re-entry application. The proposed treatment is intended to preserve the thermo-mechanical properties of a Carbon/Carbon substrate from the detrimental space environment conditions, such as LEO thermal cycles, outgassing due to ultra-high vacuum, and Atomic Oxygen / UV irradiation. In order to enhance the coating performance, the used varnish is enriched with Si-Oxide nanoparticles in different weight percentage.

Nano composite epoxy based composites were fabricated with different nano scale additives with a commonly used weight percent (wt. %). The candidate additives are Multi-wall carbon nano-tubes (MWCNTs), Alumina (AL2O3), and three different types of graphene (G-CD270, G-33C and G-24N). Ultra-sonication and homogenization were used to uniformly disperse the nano additives into epoxy.

Polymeric composites are widely adopted for design and realization of spacecraft components and subsystems, due to their lightweight and thermo-mechanical properties. However, the use of such materials for aerospace operations should be carefully conceived, since the detrimental effects they may experience within the severe space environment.