[ad_1]
Spacelab 2020
Last week, the US Air Force opened a new $ 4 million laboratory that will study and produce new materials for use in spacecraft.
The launches are risky, with NASA estimating that nearly a quarter of small satellite missions have failed in the past few decades. The Deployable Structures Lab (DeSel) will be able to stress test new advanced materials for use in space, C4ISRNET reports, which could improve the odds of successful satellite launches by making them more robust and more likely to survive.
One shot
The facility’s goal is to develop new strong materials that would allow the Air Force to build smaller advanced satellites without sacrificing functionality. C4ISRNET relationships. Regardless of size, the Air Force hopes to build materials that help the satellites stay in one piece.
“This new class of high-strain composite-enabled structures requires new ground-based testing structures,” said Benjamin Urioste, an engineer who heads the lab’s integrated structural systems team. “The satellite deployments are nerve-wracking, one-shot efforts, and the high-fidelity ground test that will take place in DeSel is critical to ensuring success in orbit.”
Pet Project
The team plans to use what it develops on the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstration and Research Project, an experimental Air Force spacecraft designed to harvest solar energy and then transmit it to military bases in the form of radio waves.
“Some of the first facilities we look forward to testing in this new lab are those required for our Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstration and Research (SSPIDR) project, one of our priority programs,” Colonel Eric Felt, director of the Air The spacecraft management of the Force Research Lab said C4ISRNET.
READ MORE: The US Air Force opens a new space laboratory [C4ISRNET]
More on space materials: ESA is weaving flax fibers into satellites so that they burn better
.
[ad_2]
Source link
