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A Planetary Environmental Simulator/Test Facility

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Protection of Materials and Structures From the Space Environment

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings ((ASSSP,volume 32))

Abstract

Under a 2-year program funded by the Canadian Space Agency, ITL Inc. is developing and manufacturing a Planetary Environmental Simulator/Test Facility to be used for testing and life-time evaluation of candidate spacecraft materials and mechanical systems, space suits, and planetary mission crew habitats. The basic facility will include a vacuum chamber and a number of environmental sources to simulate the planetary surface environments, including dust particles, UV radiation, temperature conditions and darkness, as well as simple fixtures and test rigs enabling to conduct mechanical testing of planetary rovers’ components.

The stainless steel high-vacuum chamber is cylindrical in shape with one of its ends designed to have a semi-spherical shape. The cylindrical part of the simulation chamber is 30″ in diameter and ~51″ long. The sample holder/sample transfer system allows a total displacement of ~12″ inside the chamber and allows for heating, cooling, and thermal cycling of the samples. The basic dust particles’ source includes a lunar/Martian soil simulant container, a dust refill compartment, and a funnel-like enclosure in which the dust cloud is generated and designed to confine the dust and prevent it from spreading all over the chamber. The dust is activated by a paddle actuator located inside the source, allowing generating dust clouds of different intensity and configuration. The source is designed also to mix the particles during the dust simulant conditioning stage.

A multi-stage evolutionary path of the facility is outlined with the aim to create an advanced test facility that will be used to support the design, testing, and validation of Canadian space robotic hardware.

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Acknowledgments

A large part of this work has been conducted under a 2-year STDP program with support from the Canadian Space Agency under the Contract No. 9F028-071181/016/MTB “A Planetary Environmental Simulator/Test Facility for Future Space Exploration Missions”. The authors would like to thank P.Eng. Sid Saraf and Dr. Xin Xiang Jiang from the Canadian Space Agency for general management of this project and for valuable discussions, as well as Ms. Agnes Tang for the SEM/EDS analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrity Testing Laboratory Inc., 80 Esna Park Drive, #7-9, Markham, ON, L3R 2R7, Canada

    Jacob Kleiman, Sergey Horodetsky & Vitali Issoupov

Authors
  1. Jacob Kleiman
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  2. Sergey Horodetsky
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  3. Vitali Issoupov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacob Kleiman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Integrity Testing Laboratory Inc, 80 Esna Park Drive, Units 7-9, Markham, Ontario, Canada

    Jacob Kleiman

  2. , Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University, Rokko-dai 1-1, Nada, Kobe, 657-8501, Japan

    Masahito Tagawa

  3. Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sengen, Tsukuba 2-1-1, Ibaraki, 305-8505, Japan

    Yugo Kimoto

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kleiman, J., Horodetsky, S., Issoupov, V. (2013). A Planetary Environmental Simulator/Test Facility. In: Kleiman, J., Tagawa, M., Kimoto, Y. (eds) Protection of Materials and Structures From the Space Environment. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 32. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30229-9_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30229-9_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-30228-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-30229-9

  • eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)

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